Weeding Out Flaws in Open-Source Apps

Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Stanford University and Coverity are working to identify and fix potential security defects in open-source software projects. As part of the collaborative effort, Coverity announced this week a list of 11 open-source projects that it has now certified as secure and defect-free.The list includes widely used applications, such as Perl, PHP, Samba, and Postfix, along with Amanda, NTP, OpenPAM, OpenVPN, Overdose, Python and TCL. All of the projects involved eliminating multiple classes of potential security vulnerabilities and quality defects from their code through the Coverity Scan site.

Coverity is a privately-held, San Francisco-based company that develops source-code analysis tools, and the Coverity Scan site was developed with support from Homeland Security as part of the federal government’s “Open Source Hardening Project.”

The site divides open source projects into different “rungs” based on the progress each project makes in resolving its defects. Projects at higher rungs receive access to additional analysis capabilities using the Coverity Prevent system.

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Add comment January 11th, 2008

Ask.com Gets Former Match.com CEO

Ask.com is shaking up its executive suite. Parent company IAC announced several top management changes on Thursday as it takes additional steps toward organizing its assets into five publicly traded companies. IAC will spin off HSN, Ticketmaster, Interval International and LendingTree.The shake-up includes a new CEO at Google rival Ask.com. The departing CEO, Jim Lanzone, quit after six years at the helm, and will hand the reins to Jim Safka, who will oversee Ask.com’s global operations and continue on as CEO of Primal Ventures, a new-venture entity that identifies, seeds and incubates business opportunities for IAC.

“Jim Lanzone was the principal executive responsible for Ask.com’s turnaround over the last two years. His passion for innovation and his everyday dedication to the business and its people have been everything anyone could ask for,” Barry Diller, chairman and CEO of IAC, said in a statement. “He is a superb executive and leader and I’m hopeful we can be associated in the future.”

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Add comment January 11th, 2008