Secure Coding mailing list archives
ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security
From: mgavin at forrester.com (Gavin, Michael)
Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 12:45:45 -0500
Yeah, statistics can allow you to say and "prove" just about anything. OK, showing my ignorance here, since I haven't checked out any of the LAMP source trees and reviewed the code: how much of the code making up those modules is written in scripting languages vs. how much of it is written in C, C++ (and how much, if any, is written in any other compiled languages)? If the LAMP source code itself is primarily C/C++, then arguably, the results are somewhat interesting, though I think they would be much more interesting if this DISA project was set up to test the open source code with a number of commercial scanners instead of just the Coverity scanner, then we could at least compare the merits of various scanning techniques and implementations. In this case, the distinction to me is that they have tested the LAMP platform code, not the code that people write on top of it for their applications, and are making some statements about the software security of the LAMP platform compared to the rest of the open source code they scanned. If on the other hand, a significant portion of the LAMP code base itself is made up of scripting language code, then I agree with you, the results aren't terribly useful to anyone other than possibly Coverity and Stanford. Note: significant is open to interpretation, but doesn't have to be large; 10 or 15 per cent would seem significant enough to me. -----Original Message----- From: Jeremy Epstein [mailto:jeremy.epstein at webmethods.com] Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 12:17 PM To: Gavin, Michael; Kenneth R. van Wyk; Secure Coding Mailing List Subject: RE: [SC-L] ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security All of which proves that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics (the statistic being the lower bug density, which ignores the most potentially vulnerable parts of the system).
-----Original Message----- From: sc-l-bounces at securecoding.org [mailto:sc-l-bounces at securecoding.org] On Behalf Of Gavin, Michael Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 11:49 AM To: Kenneth R. van Wyk; Secure Coding Mailing List Subject: RE: [SC-L] ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security The Coverity product (Coverity Prevent) is a static source code analysis tool for C and C++, see http://www.coverity.com/library/pdf/coverity_prevent.pdf. It isn't actually scanning (or if it is, it isn't analyzing) any of the scripting code, as far I as can tell. Michael -----Original Message----- From: sc-l-bounces at securecoding.org [mailto:sc-l-bounces at securecoding.org] On Behalf Of Kenneth R. van Wyk Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2006 10:56 AM To: Secure Coding Mailing List Subject: [SC-L] ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Interesting article out on ZDNet today: http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/security/0,39044215,39315781,00.htm The article refers to the US government sponsored study being done by Stanford University, Symantec, and Coverity. It says, "The so-called LAMP stack of open-source software has a lower bug density--the number of bugs per thousand lines of code--than a baseline of 32 open-source projects analyzed, Coverity, a maker of code analysis tools, announced Monday." This surprised me quite a bit, especially given LAMP's popular reliance on scripting languages PHP, Perl, and/or Python. Still, the article doesn't discuss any of the root causes of the claimed security strengths in LAMP-based code. Perhaps it's because the scripting languages tend to make things less complex for the coders (as opposed to more complex higher level languages like Java and C#/.NET)? Opinions? Cheers, Ken -- Kenneth R. van Wyk KRvW Associates, LLC http://www.KRvW.com _______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L at securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php _______________________________________________ Secure Coding mailing list (SC-L) SC-L at securecoding.org List information, subscriptions, etc - http://krvw.com/mailman/listinfo/sc-l List charter available at - http://www.securecoding.org/list/charter.php
Current thread:
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Kenneth R. van Wyk (Mar 07)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Gavin, Michael (Mar 07)
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Jeremy Epstein (Mar 07)
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Gavin, Michael (Mar 07)
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Jeff Williams (Mar 07)
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Crispin Cowan (Mar 07)
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Gary McGraw (Mar 07)
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Gavin, Michael (Mar 07)
- ZDNET: LAMP lights the way in open-source security Gary McGraw (Mar 07)