OSS is a double edged sword. It’s great, but the people looking for flaws that are exploitable are more often bad actors than good. At least that’s been my experience working in cyber security. Many CVEs that are responsibly disclosed are found to be actively exploited already.
Probably years of usage by intelligence agencies and criminals until someone notices. (with no possible way to know for anyone that there even is a exploit). And even then it might take months for them to fix it.
Exploit found in oss:
Depending on the usage of the software several people are looking for security holes and they usually get fixed ASAP. Of course it is possible that there’s an exploit nobody finds and a criminal uses, but it is not more likely because he can read the code. If your code must be secret to be secure your code is anything but secure
Also there is no incentive for companies to fix an exploit quickly. They will only release the fix with some scheduled update anyway or else people might notice that there was something worth fixing and that’s bad for your stock price.
OSS is a double edged sword. It’s great, but the people looking for flaws that are exploitable are more often bad actors than good. At least that’s been my experience working in cyber security. Many CVEs that are responsibly disclosed are found to be actively exploited already.
The difference is the timing.
Exploit found in closed source software:
Probably years of usage by intelligence agencies and criminals until someone notices. (with no possible way to know for anyone that there even is a exploit). And even then it might take months for them to fix it.
Exploit found in oss: Depending on the usage of the software several people are looking for security holes and they usually get fixed ASAP. Of course it is possible that there’s an exploit nobody finds and a criminal uses, but it is not more likely because he can read the code. If your code must be secret to be secure your code is anything but secure
Yes, because “security through obscurity is not security”.
Also there is no incentive for companies to fix an exploit quickly. They will only release the fix with some scheduled update anyway or else people might notice that there was something worth fixing and that’s bad for your stock price.