TaoSecurity Blog

Periodically I read about efforts by China, or Russia, or North Korea, or other countries to replace American software with indigenous or semi-indigenous alternatives. I then reply via Twitter that I love the idea, with a short reason why. This post will list the top five reasons why I want China and other likely targets of American foreign intelligence collection to run their own software. 1. Many (most?) non-US software companies write lousy code.  The US is by no means perfect, but our developers and processes generally appear to be superior to foreign indigenous efforts. Cisco vs Huawei is a good example. Cisco has plenty of problems, but it has processes in place to manage them, plus secure code development practices. Lousy indigenous code means it is easier for American intelligence agencies to penetrate foreign targets. (An example of a foreign country that excels in writing code is Israel, but thankfully it is not the same sort of priority target like China, Russia, or ...

One of the criticisms of open source software is that there is no one to blame when a customer needs a problem solved. For example, if an open source OS or application is found to suffer a vulnerability, no one is seen to be responsible for patching it. Following this line of thinking, commercial software is considered a superior choice for consumers (whether corporations or individuals). When a problem happens, users can rely on the vendor. The recent SANS ISC post about the WMF vulnerability has completely annihilated this argument. I have criticized SANS in the past, but I cannot fault their handling of the ongoing fiasco. I've never seen anything like this plea by Tom Liston before: Looking forward to the week ahead, I find myself in the very peculiar position of having to say something that I don't believe has ever been said here in the Handler's diary before: "Please, trust us." I've written more than a few diaries, and I've often been silly ...