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Open Source is one person

(opensourcesecurity.io)
433 points LawnGnome | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.347s | source
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kube-system ◴[] No.45051453[source]
I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding of this issue in the software community, because primarily, supply chain risk isn't a software or engineering issue. It's a governance issue.

Someone doesn't have to be a bad actor for a project to have supply chain risk. Nor do all who evaluate supply chain risk have the same security posture and evaluate risks the same as others might. The DoD likely has a very different set of risks they evaluate against for their security posture than you do.

Most supply chain risks are not an indictment of somebody's code or somebody's character. A lot of one person projects are risky just because they're only one person. Having a bus factor of one is a supply chain risk in and of itself.

And while most people don't prepare for war while choosing their packages, it's not unreasonable for a military to do so. During a war, the ability for people to govern themselves and their own projects often changes dramatically, even in democratic countries. It is entirely routine for countries to require cooperation by the force of law in war time, even the US can and has forced private companies to cooperate with war efforts. This is probably not in the security posture calculation for most of us. But it is for some.

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conartist6 ◴[] No.45053302[source]
Huh? The DoD would not have used the package if they hadn't read every line, locked it down for updates, and were ready to patch it themselves if needed. Can you really imagine in a war they'd be like "damn, if only there were a second person we also don't trust at all to do this work for us cause otherwise we'd just be SOL"
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kazinator ◴[] No.45055589[source]
> DoD would not have used the package if ...

That's a lot of faith in military intelligence.

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1. worik ◴[] No.45056314[source]
> military intelligence.

...is an oxymoron