US Needs Secure Coding Office 236
Trailrunner7 writes "If the United States wants to remain competitive in the global economy and prevent widespread penetrations of its strategic, corporate, and commercial networks, enterprises and government agencies should stop relying on commercial software and go back to writing more of their own custom code. 'If we're going to maintain our place in the world, software is not a strategic problem, it is the strategic problem going forward,' security expert Marcus Ranum said in a speech Tuesday. 'Covert penetration becomes something that you think about on a five, 10, or 20-year scale. Why don't we have a government coding office? We have a government printing office. Why don't we have a strategic software reserve? Our own software is probably a greater threat to us than anything other people can do to us.'"
Tinfoil hats (Score:4, Funny)
Why don't we have a government tinfoil hat office? Clearly we're under great threat of alien mindrays.
Because we don't need one. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What the hell is a strategic software reserve? (Score:5, Funny)
The only thing it could possibly mean is a reserve of *coders* ready to jump at any problem or bug that arises. Oh wait, that's called the NSA. Just need to give them more resources and jurisdiction to fix any code anywhere in the government. That'd work great:
Setting: Nondescript cubicle farm full of people working an eating donuts.
Cubicle farm is suddenly stormed by a SWAT team with M16s and tablet PCs.
Team leader: "Everybody freeze! Hands off the keyboards! We've detected a buffer overrun condition! Move, move, move!"
Guys with tablets rush to the PCs and networking closet and start typing like mad. Soldiers round up all the people into the middle of the room.
A five-star general walks into the room.
General: "What's going on here?"
Team leader: "Sir! We're neutralizing a threat in the PR office happy-hour scheduling system. We should be finished soon."
General: "Good. I'll want a full report when this is over. We need to catch the idiot who's responsible for this."
A soldier escorts an intern with hands behind his head to the leader.
Soldier: "This guy did it. We found non-compliant source code on his machine."
Team leader: "Good work, sergeant. Hand him off to headquarters at 1300."
General: "Glad to see that was taken care of quickly."
Team leader: "All in a day's work, sir."
Re:We do (Score:1, Funny)
A bunch of anti-royalist terrorists.
Ahhh Marcus.... (Score:3, Funny)
As such, many beltway types have tuned Marcus out. He's almost always right, but he goes about telling us the problems in the most confrontational manner possible.
Re:Not a case for tinfoil (Score:3, Funny)
In theory, in practice you'll have to live with that secure software is a dream you'll never achieve.
If I had to choose between the Government using a large well known OS like Windows 7 or something they hacked together themselves, I'd much prefer Windows 7 because you can be reasonably sure it won't randomly implode and if it had glaring backdoors we'd know about them by now. (Though I'd probably feel even better if they'd use something linux based)