Blog: Open Source Could Mean an Open Door for Hackers

Open Source Could Mean an Open Door for Hackers
Technology Review (06/07/10) Lemos, Robert

Flaws in open source software are exploited more quickly and more often than flaws in closed software systems, according to a paper by Boston College (BC) researchers that analyzed two years of attack data. "If you think about this whole thing as a game between the good guys and the bad guys, by reducing the effort for the bad guys, there is much greater incentive for them to exploit targets earlier and hit more firms," says BC professor Sam Ransbotham. The researchers used alert data taken from intrusion-detection systems managed on behalf of 960 companies by SecureWorks. Ransbotham also found a correlation between the existence of signatures, which are used by various security products to match a known pattern with a flaw, and earlier attacks, suggesting that the updates used to improve defenses actually help the attackers. "That tells me that there is something about having that signature that is helping people ... giving them a clue about how to exploit the vulnerability," he says.

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