bugtraq - Paper announcement: Is finding security holes a good idea?

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-ID: <20040121234132.B9FD271DB@sierra.rtfm.com>
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 15:41:32 -0800
From: Eric Rescorla <ekr@...m.com>
To: bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Paper announcement: Is finding security holes a good idea?

Bugtraq readers might be interested in this paper:

                   Is finding security holes a good idea?

                             Eric Rescorla
                   RTFM, Inc.   <http://www.rtfm.com/>

A large amount of effort is expended every year on finding and patching
security holes. The underlying rationale for this activity is that it
increases welfare by decreasing the number of bugs available for
discovery and exploitation by bad guys, thus reducing the total cost of
intrusions. Given the amount of effort expended, we would expect to see
noticeable results in terms of improved software quality. However, our
investigation does not support a substantial quality improvement--the
data does not allow us to exclude the possibility that the rate of bug
finding in any given piece of software is constant over long periods of
time. If there is little or no quality improvement, then we have no
reason to believe that that the disclosure of bugs reduces the overall
cost of intrusions.

The paper can be downloaded from:
http://www.rtfm.com/bugrate.pdf
http://www.rtfm.com/bugrate.ps