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Application Security

Open Source v. Closed Source: What's More Secure?

In the wake of Shellshock and Heartbleed, has the glow of open-source application security dimmed?

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RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/21/2014 | 11:07:40 AM
Re: Devil's Advocate
Agreed, sometimes when something is implemented that cannot increase security posture you need to go back to the framework and make changes to the baseline. This may be off topic from Open Source vs Closed Source, but DoS is the same way. Its still very prevalent due to the way hardware handles packets. A needed functionality, so changes need to be made to the overall hardware handling. However, I do think that more hands involved in the rearchitecture would be optimal. 
Lucamp
Lucamp,
 User Rank: Strategist
10/21/2014 | 5:29:54 AM
Open source
From my persective, open source is more secure and more people work on it that in close code. However, the types of vulnerabilites that open source is exposed is different that in close code. Also the quality of open source projeects is higher that in close code from my experience (Two Big Companies). 
Dr.T
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/20/2014 | 1:46:59 PM
Re: Devil's Advocate
Good point. That also depends of the architecture of the system, you can not make Java any more secure regardless of how many developers you put on it. A new way of thinking and architecture is needed for that.
Dr.T
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/20/2014 | 1:44:47 PM
Agree with the video
 

I think video is taking right approach tough, no need to differentiate open source from closed source when it comes to security, both will have vulnerabilities and they requires us to do ongoing monitoring and analysis to catch those vulnerabilities before they heard us.
Dr.T
Dr.T,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/20/2014 | 1:42:17 PM
Open source
Open source may reveal more information in its structure but at the same time it may also be an environment that vulnerabilities are found and mitigated early enough since more than one set of eyes are looking at it.
RyanSepe
RyanSepe,
 User Rank: Ninja
10/20/2014 | 11:16:26 AM
Devil's Advocate
I agree very much with this ideology of closed versus open source. But to be the devil's advocate, wouldn't the same reason provided "more people being able to see the source code" also provide for a more adept security model. In theory, the more eyes that look at the code the greater the exposure to expanding on that code beneficially. This includes not only security but app development. Linux and Linux derivatives are very much based on this methodology. What reasoning then is it assumed that more exposure to the code will result in a detrimental outcome over a beneficial one?
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