is open source more secure ? Post: 302331403

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Special Forums Cybersecurity is open source more secure ? Post 302331403 by bakunin on Monday 6th of July 2009 05:41:14 AM

07-06-2009

Registered User

I agree with Neo. I'd like to split the matter into two distinct parts, a theoretical and a practical one.

Even theoretically-only spoken the matter of closed-source versus open-source remains complicated. A possible advantage of open-source is the peer-review process which can take place. But to capitalize on this advantage this process has to take place at all, which is in no way guaranteed by something being open-source at all.

A possible advantage of closed-source software would be the "security by obscurity" approach. Experience suggests that this is not a (lasting) security measure at all and in the case of compromised security there is a single possible source able to provide corrective services, whereas open-source software could be changed by everybody in theory, which still leaves a lot of possible authors of corrections in practice.

Approaching the problem on a practical level it has to be stated that "security" is - like "performance" for that matter - a relative term and cannot be used absolutely. There is some value of x you want to protect and there is some estimated effort of y needed to overcome your security measures. If x is (much) bigger than y you have a security problem, otherwise you haven't.

To appraise your security status simply put yourself into the place of the intruder: will it possibly pay off to overcome your defenses? Act, if the answer is "yes" or near there, otherwise don't bother.

It is similar to what i have countlessly told executives in meetings regarding "performance": you have some demand, which can be measured (in seconds, transactions completed, kilobytes, whatever) and there is a system having to meet the demand. It comes down to "does the system meet the specified demand - yes/no?" Performance is not being "fast" but "fast enough".

The same is true for security: what you protect and the efforts for protecting it have to be in proportion and the question is not "safe" but "safe enough".

bakunin

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chkey

chkey(1)						      General Commands Manual							  chkey(1)

NAME

       chkey - change user's secure RPC key pair

SYNOPSIS

       [ ] [

DESCRIPTION

       is used to change a user's secure RPC public key and secret key pair.  prompts for the old secure-rpc password and verifies that it is cor-
       rect by decrypting the secret key.

       If the user has not already used to decrypt and store the secret key with registers the secret key with the local daemon.  If  the  secure-
       rpc  password  does  not  match	the  login password, prompts for the login password.  uses the login password to encrypt the user's secret
       Diffie-Hellman (192 bit) cryptographic key.

       ensures that the login password and the secure-rpc password are kept the same.

       The key pair can be stored in the file (see publickey(4)), the NIS map, or entries in the LDAP directory.  If a new secret  key	is  gener-
       ated, it will be registered with the local daemon.

       If  the	source	of  the  is  not  specified  with  the	option, consults the entry in the name service switch configuration file (see nss-
       witch.conf(4)).	If the entry specifies one and only one source, then will change the key in the specified name service.  However, if  mul-
       tiple name services are listed, cannot decide which source to update and will display an error message.	The user should specify the source
       explicitly with the option.

       Non root users are not allowed to change their key pair in the file.

   Options
       Re-encrypt the existing secret key with the user's
		   login password.

       Update the  NIS database.

       Update the  database.

       Update the  LDAP database.

WARNINGS

       HP-UX 11i Version 2 is the last HP-UX release on which NIS+ is supported.  LDAP is the recommended replacement for NIS+.  HP fully supports
       the industry standard naming services based on LDAP.

AUTHOR

       was developed by Sun Microsystems, Inc.

FILES

SEE ALSO

       keylogin(1), keylogout(1), keyserv(1M), newkey(1M), nsswitch.conf(4), publickey(4).

																	  chkey(1)