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Bugs in Open Source Software Hit a Record High


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More bugs were identified as a result of increased adoption of open source software, and more focused efforts on finding dangerous bugs.

The number of open source software vulnerabilities identified rose nearly 50% this year.

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The number of open source software vulnerabilities identified has risen from 4,100 last year to 6,100 this year, according to security firm WhiteSource.

This trend can be attributed to increased adoption of open source software and more focused efforts on finding dangerous bugs.

WhiteSource found that 85% of open source vulnerabilities have been disclosed and already have a fix available (although some users are not aware of the fixes, because only 84% of known open-source bugs have been entered into the National Vulnerability Database).

WhiteSource also looked at how many vulnerabilities were found across the most-used programming languages. The greatest share (30%) of vulnerable code was written in C, while code written in PHP was responsible for 27% of security bugs, and Python code was responsible for 5% of bugs.

From ZDNet
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