Software bugs are inevitable, but some issues are more about not vetting third-party libraries than actual coding mistakes. Many of the security vulnerabilities found in commercial software are the result of using at-risk versions of open source libraries and frameworks, and the problem isn’t getting any better.
Modern software development relies on cobbling together custom code with multiple open source components, but organizations underestimate exactly how many libraries and frameworks they actually use, Black Duck Software said in its latest Open Source Security and Risk Analysis.
Of the 1,000-plus commercial applications audited by the company in 2016, 96 percent contained at least one open source component. A little more than one-third of the application’s codebase is made up of open source code, with an average application using 147 unique components, according to the analysis.
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