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from the we-want-to-look-at-who-is-looking-at-you dept.
Submitted via IRC for BoyceMagooglyMonkey
The U.S. government is stepping up its sensitivity to foreign governments insisting on reviews of software company's source code.
The section of the bill that passed the Senate with an 87-10 vote stipulates that the Department of Defense cannot use any software product in a range of its systems unless the manufacturer fully discloses the software reviews by foreign governments that it has previously allowed or is under obligation to allow in the future. The language of the order is typically convoluted, and it does not include all foreign governments, only governments that are placed on a forthcoming list of cyber threats that is due within 180 days after the bill is signed. The president still has to sign off on the legislation, something he's expected to do, but you never know with this guy.
It appears that the section was prompted by a Reuters investigation from last year that found Hewlett Packard Enterprise permitted a company to review its source code for a piece of cyber defense technology on the behalf of the Russian government. The software is also used by the Pentagon. A subsequent report found that SAP, Symantec, and McAfee had also given the Russian government permission to dig through their code for software that's also used by the DOD.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/congress-votes-to-force-software-makers-to-reveal-if-th-1828064013
(Score: 2) by legont on Tuesday August 07 2018, @01:20AM
Forget about the source code. The company I work for outsourced all the support into various parts of the world. They have administrative access that we don't. If China wants to hack us, they are just a few clicks away, including the source code.
If DoD wants it secure, they'd have to do it old fashioned way - in house and behind the barb wire - similar to Manhattan Project (which was also penetrated at least twice).
Those monkeys can't win and the largest evil is hit the hardest (wikileaks design).
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.