Heartbleed Sparks 'Responsible' Disclosure Debate 188
bennyboy64 writes: "IT security industry experts are beginning to turn on Google and OpenSSL, questioning whether the Heartbleed bug was disclosed 'responsibly.' A number of selective leaks to Facebook, Akamai, and CloudFlare occurred prior to disclosure on April 7. A separate, informal pre-notification program run by Red Hat on behalf OpenSSL to Linux and Unix operating system distributions also occurred. But router manufacturers and VPN appliance makers Cisco and Juniper had no heads up. Nor did large web entities such as Amazon Web Services, Twitter, Yahoo, Tumblr and GoDaddy, just to name a few. The Sydney Morning Herald has spoken to many people who think Google should've told OpenSSL as soon as it uncovered the critical OpenSSL bug in March, and not as late as it did on April 1. The National Cyber Security Centre Finland (NCSC-FI), which reported the bug to OpenSSL after Google, on April 7, which spurred the rushed public disclosure by OpenSSL, also thinks it was handled incorrectly. Jussi Eronen, of NCSC-FI, said Heartbleed should have continued to remain a secret and be shared only in security circles when OpenSSL received a second bug report from the Finnish cyber security center that it was passing on from security testing firm Codenomicon. 'This would have minimized the exposure to the vulnerability for end users,' Mr. Eronen said, adding that 'many websites would already have patched' by the time it was made public if this procedure was followed."
Why free and fun? I review FOSS for a living. (Score:4, Informative)
> Indeed, who would review other people's code for free or for fun?
Some people do, of course. I have, specifically for security issues, because that's a major resume point in the security world - having actually found and fixed real-world security issues.
99% of the time, I'm being paid to review and improve open source code. All of those companies that use open source, including Google, have a vested interest in making sure that the code they use is good. Since it's open source, the Google techs can actually dig into the code and find issues like this, then fix it, just like they did in this case. They didn't do it for free and for fun, they did it because Google relies on OpenSSL.
My employer also relies on OSS. My job is to administer, maintain, and improve the OSS software we use. I've found and fixed security issues. Not for free and for fun, but because we want our systems to be secure, and having the source allows me to do that.
When I craft an improvement, at LEAST three people have to look at it before it's committed upstream. Typically, five or six people will comment on it and suggest improvements or state their approval before it's finalized.