Open Source Security Incidents Aren't Going Away

COMMENTARY

Open source security incidents aren't going away. The reliance on open source software (OSS) increases year-over-year, with more than 95% of all software, including open source, in some capacity. From operating systems to critical libraries to Web applications and more, open source software (OSS) plays a pivotal role in the current technology landscape. However, this widespread reliance introduces significant security risks. As the use of OSS continues to evolve, so does the importance of securing it. This responsibility falls not on individual hobbyist developers, but on the companies and organizations that have the resources to dedicate engineers specifically to open source security. These organizations are the ones that benefit the most from open source and should be the ones who contribute the most back.  

Essential Skills for Open Source Security Developers

Securing open source is similar to securing closed source, but many of the skills required are of higher importance for open source, due to various factors. Open source is public and tends to have broader adoption than much closed source software. A closed source tool with a security vulnerability used by a handful of customers is going to have a very different impact than something like OpenSSH having a vulnerability, given its use on millions of servers worldwide. 

I hope this doesn't come as a surprise, but the most important open source skills to have are soft skills. Most software development time is spent doing things other than actually writing code. Here are a few key skills:  

Just because soft skills are more important than hard skills for software development doesn't mean those hard skills are irrelevant. They are still important, and a few of them in particular are of focused importance for open source security. The open source community gets the benefit of a project being public, enabling the community to come together to secure the project with experts in different areas providing their expertise. However, with open source being public, it also exposes projects to malicious actors, like we saw in the XZ compromise, where a bad actor maintainer contributed innocuous-looking, but ultimately malicious, code. This is why software engineers focused on open source security need to be vigilant and experienced to know what to look for when they get contributions from anonymous developers. Here are some of the skills that are important: 

As the reliance on open source software continues to grow, so does the necessity for open source developers focused on security. This need is becoming even more critical with the rise of open source AI projects. Open source AI introduces new layers of complexity and opacity due to massive datasets and the probabilistic nature of trained models. The sheer volume of data and the intricacies of machine learning algorithms make it challenging to identify vulnerabilities and predict how models might behave in unforeseen circumstances. 

The "black box" aspect of AI models means that even the developers may not fully understand how inputs are being processed to produce outputs. This opacity can be exploited, leading to security breaches such as data poisoning, adversarial attacks, and unintended bias. Therefore, securing open source AI requires specialized skills and a deep understanding of both AI technologies and security principles. 

Companies and organizations must recognize the importance of investing in engineers who possess both the soft and hard skills required to secure open source software effectively, especially in the rapidly evolving field of AI. By fostering these skills, we can enhance the security of open source projects, benefiting individual organizations and the global community that relies on them.