One tool and five best practices

One tool and five best practices

One tool and five best practices for reducing Kevin Mitnick, a cybersecurity consultant, author, and keynote speaker, states, “Then again, my case was all about the misappropriation of source code because I wanted to become the best hacker in the world and I enjoyed beating the security mechanisms.” Over 30 years ago, roughly at the same time that the internet became widely used, open-source software emerged. Cell phones, cloud computing, and emerging technologies like AI and the Internet of Things have all adopted clear security standards since then. However, open-source software (OSS) continues to be an exception due to its “open” and accessible nature. The good news is that anyone can use, distribute, and modify open-source software. The bad news is that hackers are also people who introduce open-source chaos with no intention of improving code. All IT applications have security vulnerabilities in their source code. Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to identify which applications are open source or contain open-source components. Risky Open-Source Software Open-source front-end software like Mozilla Firefox, GIMP, Python, PHP, Apache Spark, and various CRM applications like Odoo, Hubspot, or ConcourseSuite are probably familiar to you. However, back-end tools used to investigate security anomalies, such as Wireshark, TCPflow, Ngrep, and other network protocol and packet analyzers, are also open-source applications. These shop-worn tools frequently go unnoticed by security personnel. The widespread use of open-source software and hardware components is overlooked by many businesses. Over 95% of all applications on the global market use open-source code, and 90% of IT leaders rely on enterprise open source for network support, “application development, digital transformation,” and “infrastructure modernization.” Threats persist, despite the fact that most leaders believe enterprise open source software is as secure as proprietary software. Over 85% of applications have at least one security flaw. Worse, the most common PHP-based applications with “very high severity flaws” are WordPress, Wikipedia, and others. Security flaws and all, some developers get more than they bargained for when they borrow open-source code from non-commercial sources. In a world where more than 80% of cyberattacks occur at the application layer, such foolishness can be harmful and costly. You are already ahead of the game if you are one of the 5% of developers who do not utilize open-source code.