[Discuss] AeroFS

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Richard Pieri)]

Mike Small wrote:
> vs. proprietary software in general. I question your response that
> seemed to be saying black box testing is everything since whitebox
> testing, code scanning and auditing are also obviously useful, but
> mostly because I don't see how it protects you from purposeful

Auditing won't find problems like Heartbleed if the auditors don't 
understand what they're looking at. Automated code scanning won't trip 
over correctly written stupidity. White box testing like this will only 
tell you that the syntax is correct, that the code generates 
deterministic results for known input. White box testing gets you 
results like that scene in "Jurassic Park" where the programmer removes 
the count limiter from the dinosaur population counter and the numbers 
skyrocket.

> evasion. It's very easy to write code whose output looks fine 999 out of
> 1000 runs. If an insider leaks this fact to the press, what do you get
> from a company except a denial? If you don't have the source in question
> how do you get past he said she said?

By demonstrating that failure with a proof of concept. You don't need 
source code for that, just a working exploit to show to the vendor's 
security team and then the world at large if the security team fails to 
address the issue in a timely manner.

> With cloud maybe there's a further question: how do you validate that
> the server's running the code they say they are? But I was thinking more
> in general. (I don't use cloud services much myself.)

By identifying deterministic results.

-- 
Rich P.