Open source has emerged as the lifeblood of digital transformation. Open source development, while fueled by collaborative change-making innovation that has reduced time to market and cost, comes with new security challenges that are unavoidable for organizations. With more high-profile security breaches affecting open-source components than ever, the need for strong security practices in our projects has never been greater.
Then, of course, in the last couple of years, we’ve had devastating incidents such as the Log4Shell vulnerability, which impacted millions of devices globally, serving as the reality check that open-source security is not a nice-to-have but instead a must-have. The growing number of open-source components used in all kinds of software projects means that organizations are coming to realize their security is only as strong as the weakest open-source component.
This is where this comprehensive guide to open-source security will come into the equation, as we’ll be diving into the reasons why it’s important, what the common risks are, and what we can learn from previous incidents that have informed current best practices. Understanding this is vital for developers, security professionals, and business leaders alike as they work to effectively manage open-source security within their organization.
Key takeaways include:
- Open-source software powers modern technology, but one vulnerable component can create major security risks affecting millions of devices.
- Regular updates and security scans of open-source components help organizations prevent dangerous breaches before they happen.
Open-source security refers to the methods and tools involved in securing open-source software components as well as their underlying systems. At its core level, it is about making sure that code used by organizations from open source is held to strict standards and does not introduce vulnerabilities to their applications. This is more than just discovering known vulnerabilities. It is a holistic approach to managing security across the open-source software life cycle.
It includes various aspects of open-source security. Vulnerability management refers to the process of discovering, evaluating, and fixing security flaws to avoid exploitation. In addition, secure coding practices ensure that new contributions maintain high-security standards, and dependency tracking allows organizations to keep a visual of their software supply chain, knowing what components are being used and where they originate.
With many modern applications comprising more open-source than proprietary code, a single vulnerable component can potentially bring an entire system down. This requires organizations to follow the same level of review standards for open-source security as they do for their custom-developed software.
Open source software is a main pillar of modern software development with benefits that go beyond just cost savings. Open source offers unparalleled transparency that allows organizations to inspect, change, and improve on the code they are dependent on. Open source increased transparency builds trust and allows teams to quickly identify and address security issues and concerns. The collaborative nature of open-source development even means that vulnerabilities are often caught and fixed much quicker than proprietary software.
While the economic value of open-source software is unparalleled, the power factor is the community building it. They allow organizations to harness the collective knowledge of thousands of developers across the globe, giving them the opportunity to benefit from a continuous stream of enhancements, enduring fixes, and security patches. Such collaboration accelerates innovation at a fast pace for any organization to effectively achieve in isolation and simultaneously provides adjustability to solutions mapped to business context.
A community-driven development also means that the enterprise is not locked to the ecosystem of a single vendor. Teams are free to change and customize the software per their specific needs, making their technology stack flexible and future-proof. The innovative speed and robust community behind open-source software keep alluring organizations from all scales towards it, making open-source software a much more appealing choice because of this flexibility.
Also Read: What Is ASPM (Application Security Posture Management)?
Common Open Source Security Risks and Vulnerabilities
With the rise in organizational dependency on open-source components, an understanding of the open-source security landscape is more important than ever. When it comes to open-source vulnerabilities, organizations should be aware of the following:
Unpatched Vulnerabilities
No matter how secure the code is, it can become brittle over time. Organizations that do not update their open-source components as soon as a fix is available to expose themselves to attackers who are actively scanning for known vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities are especially dangerous as exploitation code is most often found publicly. According to reports, it takes an average of 97 days to patch known vulnerabilities, giving attackers a large window of opportunity.
Abandoned or Poorly Maintained Projects
The entire open-source ecosystem is built from community contribution, but what occurs when the community does not stick around? Vulnerabilities will never get patched. Projects that have been abandoned or are poorly maintained will contain vulnerabilities that are not going to be patched. However, these ‘digital time bombs’ can lie dormant until it’s too late and compromise security.
Supply Chain Attacks
Modern applications often involve complex dependency trees, which increases the potential for supply chain attacks. The attackers tend to attack widely used open-source packages, which will affect thousands of applications built on them. In recent times, npm and PyPI package incidents highlighted the issue with the interdependence of packages. This means that a single supply chain attack through a malicious package in the software supply chain can have cascading effects.
License Compliance Issues
Although not a direct security flaw, license compliance issues can create pressure to replace or rewrite large swaths of code quickly, heightening the risk of introducing security weaknesses. Open-source licenses need to be tracked and managed for long-term security stability. From permissive licenses like MIT and Apache to the more restrictive GPL, organizations have to deal with a nightmare of licensing implications in the usage and distribution of code.
Insecure Dependencies
Since dependencies are transitive by definition, organizations often lack a complete view of their open-source consumption. The presence of these dependencies introduces risks that are not easily tracked or remediated and create blind spots in security coverage. Even the most basic modern application can have hundreds, if not thousands, of direct and indirect dependencies representing a significant attack surface from a security perspective.
Common Open Source Security Breach Examples
Vulnerabilities in open-source components have been the root cause of some of the most significant cybersecurity incidents of recent times. These landmark cases changed the way organizations think about open-source security:
Log4j (Log4Shell Vulnerability)
Log4Shell was a vulnerability that sent shivers down the spines of developers everywhere in December of 2021. There was an essential bug in the widely used Log4j logging library that allows attackers to execute remote code on vulnerable systems. There were massive numbers of devices with millions of instances vulnerable to remote code execution. Tech giants, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Apple, raced to secure their systems, and security teams around the globe worked through the night to stop attackers from trying to exploit affected systems.
Heartbleed (OpenSSL Vulnerability)
In 2014, Heartbleed was found, a serious flaw in OpenSSL that had been silently ravaging almost 17% of the entire secure web server landscape. This security vulnerability lets attackers read the sensitive memory contents of the affected servers, meaning that private keys, passwords, and other confidential data may be exposed. The main reason for the popularity of Heartbleed was that it had existed undetected for two years before being discovered. Billions in costs were incurred by organizations in response efforts, and this opportunity led to massive coordination efforts across the internet for patching and certificate renewal.
Equifax Breach (Apache Struts Vulnerability)
In March 2017, a vulnerability went unpatched in a piece of software called Apache Struts, leading to the breach of sensitive data for 147 million people. The attackers took advantage of a known vulnerability with a patch available for months, highlighting the utmost importance of timely delivery of security updates.
Open Source Security Best Practices
Securing open-source components is a process that works best when it incorporates both automation and human expertise. These are the best practices that organizations need to have in place:
Regularly Update Dependencies
To maintain the security of open-source software, it is essential to keep it updated with dependencies. Your organization should have an automated dependency tracking system in place that is continuously tracking both direct and transitive dependencies. This system should be able to generate alerts when vulnerabilities are found of a certain level and then create an update notification.
Use Vulnerability Scanning Tools
In order to have a modern security practice, the organization needs tools for vulnerability scanning, such as Cycode, for continuous monitoring of the code repositories. These should be embedded in your CI/CD pipeline and scanned for every build stage automatically. Tools that scan must also provide detailed reports on the severity and impact of these vulnerabilities so that security teams can prioritize their responses.
Sign Your Artifacts
Adopting cryptographic signing for your release artifacts is an important step in ensuring the integrity of the software you deploy. By verifying each artifact against a trusted signature, teams can confirm that the code has not been tampered with after testing and approval. This approach helps eliminate risks associated with malicious modifications, bolstering the defense against supply chain attacks that exploit unnoticed alterations in open-source components.
Control Your Build Pipelines
Securing the entire build pipeline is essential for maintaining confidence in your software’s origin. Rigorously controlling who can access and modify CI/CD processes helps prevent unauthorized changes. This includes enforcing strict permissions, automating integrity checks, and implementing regular audits.
Source Software from Trusted Repositories
Before using open-source repositories, all packages should be verified via signature and checksum verification. Frequent audits of third-party sources mitigate the risk of falling below accepted security standards. Documenting vendor security requirements helps develop a checklist of security-related criteria against which to measure new sources before use.
It’s important to remember that even well-known repositories should not be taken at face value. Implementing checksums, signature verification, or at least pinned package versions is key to verifying the authenticity of the packages you rely on.
Conclusion
Open-source security has gone from a small issue to a critical business requirement. And as organizations continue to use open source as the foundation for their digital infrastructure, the importance of maintaining good security processes only gets higher. The most impactful security events, such as Log4Shell, Heartbleed, and the Equifax breach, serve to highlight the reality that open-source security is not merely about the protection of code versus non-code but rather the protection of business continuity, customer trust, and organizational reputation.
Organizations should take a proactive approach and avoid waiting for a security incident to paint the weaknesses in the open-source components they are using. Get a demo of Cycode’s Complete ASPM Platform today and secure your software supply chain. Cycode’s Complete ASPM Platform provides instant on visibility of software risk, automated dependency management, continuous vulnerability monitoring, and advanced security controls that enable organizations to stay proactive regarding new threats. Schedule a demo today and learn more about how Cycode can help update your open-source security posture to defend your assets at risk from ever-evolving security vulnerabilities.
