This was not the conclusion that most people would have reached over the last two weeks as significant security flaws were disclosed in several popular e-mail packages, including Eudora, Microsoft Outlook and Netscape Mail. Instead, most of the focus was on how users could get their hands on patches, the additional bits of software code that would spackle over the holes in their vulnerable e-mail programs. Nonetheless, network security experts are adamant that the roots of the problem are fundamental and widespread. Consider the recently exposed e-mail flaw that would enable an intruder to send an electronic message containing a program intended to damage or steal data. Nobody knows what flaws are in them.
Nobody even knows, really, everything that they do.
Yet, he said, we install them without thinking. Then there are all the things which are part of Windows which haven't been looked at, with an eye toward security, by anybody other than the vendor. There's no way to find out the Windows source code. Until a few months ago, the same was true of Netscape. But earlier this year, Netscape published its source code to encourage its use by third-party software developers.