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by saagarjha 2704 days ago
> Open-source "many eyes have looked at it for years so it must be secure" crypto code.

Nobody claims this. Open source code is just easier to audit than non-open code.

2 comments

Well, in the past it was one of the main arguments in favor of open source. There is even a related article on the WP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_Law (it has nothing to do with Linus though)
No, it's not and has never been; you have it backwards. Closed-source code is guaranteed[0] to be insecure, open source code may or may not be secure. New open source code is almost certainly insecure for much the same reasons closed code is insecure, but trends toward security over time as more people inspect it and fix security holes.

0: In the same sense that the hash of a arbitrary string is guaranteed to not be all-bits-zero or that a fair coin is guaranteed not to come up heads 100 times in a row.

I don't claim that the "Linus's law" is true, I only point out it was used by some open source evangelists. It took decades and a few high-profile bugs to show it's not that simple.

As to the core of your argument, I think your position is too extreme. It depends very much if the software was developed using formal methods and a specialized language. Safety-critical systems are rarely open source, and yet a lot of effort and resources is put to make them secure. That other project choose time-to-market rather than security is their choice, not something inherent to open or closed-source software.

Linus's law says that if enough people look at something, the bugs will appear. But often not very many people are actually looking at the source code of open source software. So there is no contradiction here.
Heavy emphasis on "in the past," and probably also, "ESR claimed."
Yes, and the article itself is an example of this.