Comments on: Symantec pcAnywhere source leaked, Hacker negotiations fail

By: Matti

Matti — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:18:00 +0000

I’m pretty sure that’s what Symantec says and wants us all to believe.

By: Mellissa Pottle

Mellissa Pottle — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:20:00 +0000

This code is 5 years old and irrelevant. I have no idea why this is still news.

By: Aras

Aras — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:14:00 +0000

the thing that makes open source software safer where anyone can read the code is that with more good guys reading the code, any security problem will be found and fixed much more quickly. There is more verifiability of the software. Just having the source code for software does not in any way compromise the software unless the software is flawed, shoddy and has bugs. Reading source code will not give one any information that would allow one to find a vulnerability if the source code is well written and has no vulnerabilitesn in the first place. I would never do business with a software company that does not want its source code to be seen because it has bugs and is a flawed product. Such a company is hiding its mistakes and unreliability rather than writing good software. Again, the bad guys will find the vulnerabilities without needing source code, so software that has problenms and flaws is not safe to use, period, and the fact is, if its closed source software its even worse because the good guys will not be able to find and fix these problems as quickly. In addition, symantec and its employees itself could put malicious code in software , unless we on the outside can look at that software for ourselves, we have no way of knowing. Open source software is auditable by the users themselves as users can read the software that is running on their computer. Thats really what you want if you want a computer to be safe.

By: Aras

Aras — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 01:02:00 +0000

The fact is, having the source for software in the open does not create a security problem. If software is so shoddy that it has vulnerabilities and problems which can be found by reading the source code, its not safe to use it anyway, and these vulnerabilities will be found anyway. In fact, open source software is much safer as the source code is vetted and examined by more people, it is more likely that any security problem will be found. This is one reason why Linux is a far safer OS than Windows is. In fact Microsoft has known about gaping security holes in Windows that it knew about for years but refused to fix these problems. I would recommend that users of PCanywhere and other proprietary software dump this software and use open source alternatives instead.