Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday August 06 2018, @05:42PM   Printer-friendly
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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @08:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 07 2018, @08:27AM (#718158)

    However, being open source, many many people are reviewing and testing code, so there are likely fewer bugs, and quicker patching.

    Hilarious. Many "user experience" bugs might be spotted but from history there were plenty of security vulnerabilities and exploits in OSS that were not spotted for quite a long while. Example:

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/10/13/sshowdown_botnet/ [theregister.co.uk]
    https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2018/06/15/cve-2018-12020-digital-signature-spoofing/ [helpnetsecurity.com]

    Most people won't notice a security bug even if a dialog box popped up and told them there was one.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   -1  
       Troll=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Troll' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   -1