On Tuesday 04 June 2002 05:29 pm, J. Craig Woods wrote: > Good food for thought. The only effective opposition is an INFORMED > opposition. > > drjung > > Study: Open source poses security risks > > By Matthew Broersma > Special to ZDNet > June 3, 2002 > > A conservative U.S. think tank suggests in an upcoming report that > open-source software > is inherently less secure than proprietary software, and warns > governments against relying on it for national security. > > The white paper, Opening the Open Source Debate, from the Alexis de > Tocqueville Institution (ADTI) will suggest that open source opens the > gates to hackers and terrorists. "Terrorists trying to hack or disrupt > U.S. computer networks might find it easier if the federal government > attempts to switch to 'open source' as some groups propose," ADTI said > in a statement released ahead of the report. > > Open-source software is freely available for distribution and > modification, as long as the modified software is itself available under > open-source terms. The Linux operating system is the best-known example > of open source, having become popular in the Web server market because > of its stability and low cost. > > Many researchers have also suggested that since a large community > contributes to and > scrutinizes open-source code, security holes are less likely to occur > than in proprietary software, and can be caught and fixed more quickly. > > The ADTI white paper, to be released next week, will take the opposite > line, outlining > "how open source might facilitate efforts to disrupt or sabotage > electronic commerce, air traffic control or even sensitive surveillance > systems," the institute said. > "Computer systems are the backbone to U.S. national security," said ADTI > Chairman Gregory Fossedal. "Before the Pentagon and other federal > agencies make uninformed decisions to alter the very foundation of > computer security, they should study the potential consequences > carefully." > > Interesting, > drjung
Has anyone actually read the paper? All that I have been able to find is the article quoted above. I've spent some time poking around the ADTI site: It's a conservative think tank that issues white papers on various issues, particularly school vouchers, the NEA, international monetary policy and other things: I could find nothing to suggest that they have _any_ expertise in the area of computer security or open source software. They have written a few papers about Microsoft in addition to the one cited above; most of these related to the MS anti-trust trial, and were of the tone, "Penalizing MS for its actions would be a bad thing." Fossedal's credentials to expound upon the relative merits of open source software are interesting: He graduated from Dartmouth in 1981, where his senior thesis on Shakespeare sonnets won him an award. He was an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal from 1983 to 1986, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution from 1986 to 1991. He has been with the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution since then. See, if you'd have spent more time studying Shakespeare and less time messing around with all of that technical stuff, you too could get headlines on ZDNet instead of wasting your time on this list. -- cmg
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