In today’s development environment, open source software is an integral part of most applications. Open source lets developers do more in less time by reusing existing code and building on successful community-driven innovation. But this can also introduce new vulnerabilities and risks which affect the entire software project.
Open source components are often considered to be more vulnerable to attacks than proprietary code for several reasons:
Distributed development and uneven standards—open source software is developed by many developers in different locations with varying levels of coding and security expertise. It is much easier to keep track of and manage code developed internally at an organization, and make sure it follows policies and standards. In an open source project, it is more difficult to enforce strict quality and security standards and, in addition, the code is open and readily available to attackers.
Evolving risks—even if software is tested and no open source vulnerabilities are detected, new vulnerabilities may be discovered at some point in the future which affect a component version previously thought to be secure. Additionally, while one version of a component may be secure, a new version may introduce new vulnerabilities.
Zero-day vulnerabilities—because open source code is open to everyone, both malicious actors and open source developers may discover vulnerabilities. Until a patch is available and actually deployed by the component’s users, those vulnerabilities can be exploited by attackers.