Who pays free crypto developers?
Crypto or Bust
© Lead Image © Gigra, 123RF.com
Although open source crypto software is used virtually all over the world, the projects behind it are often small and chronically underfunded. Heartbleed, however, brings a possibility of improvement.
Community Notebook
Open source software has the advantage that anyone can inspect the code and thus discover bugs. Despite this, a glaring security hole went unnoticed in OpenSSL [1] for more than two years, eventually going down in history as the Heartbleed bug [2]. Seemingly – although the OpenSSL source code is freely available – no one actually noticed the problem because hardly anyone had been looking.
Of course, a bug like this would not attract so much attention if the OpenSSL user base were not so huge. Millions of private users and countless companies rely on this cryptography software. Although it is designed to protect the security of multimillion dollar projects, its development rests in the hands of a small group of programmers. As in the case of GnuPG [3], sometimes only one person maintains the extensive codebase.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Gnome Developers Consider Dropping RPM Support
In a move that might shock a lot of users, the Gnome development team has proposed the idea of going straight up Flatpak.
-
openSUSE Tumbleweed Ditches AppArmor for SELinux
If you're an openSUSE Tumbleweed user, you can expect a major change to the distribution.
-
Plasma 6.3 Now Available
Plasma desktop v6.3 has a couple of pretty nifty tricks up its sleeve.
-
LibreOffice 25.2 Has Arrived
If you've been hoping for a release that offers more UI customizations, you're in for a treat.
-
TuxCare Has a Big AlmaLinux 9 Announcement in Store
TuxCare announced it has successfully completed a Security Technical Implementation Guide for AlmaLinux OS 9.
-
First Release Candidate for Linux Kernel 6.14 Now Available
Linus Torvalds has officially released the first release candidate for kernel 6.14 and it includes over 500,000 lines of modified code, making for a small release.
-
System76 Refreshes Meerkat Mini PC
If you're looking for a small form factor PC powered by Linux, System76 has exactly what you need in the Meerkat mini PC.
-
Gnome 48 Alpha Ready for Testing
The latest Gnome desktop alpha is now available with plenty of new features and improvements.
-
Wine 10 Includes Plenty to Excite Users
With its latest release, Wine has the usual crop of bug fixes and improvements, along with some exciting new features.
-
Linux Kernel 6.13 Offers Improvements for AMD/Apple Users
The latest Linux kernel is now available, and it includes plenty of improvements, especially for those who use AMD or Apple-based systems.