MAGNIFYING OPEN SOURCE ADVANTAGES
Te Dshell team is aware of the risks of putting security-related government code into the wild. However, the benefits, in many cases, outweigh the risks. Te Dshell team decided that provid- ing the means for good actors to review the code and identify any weaknesses exploitable by bad actors is of greater value than attempting to keep it secure through obscurity.
Users can create copies of Dshell and do what they want with it. ARL, in this case, or the host organization of any open source release, has no control over the copies. Tis is a lot like sending someone a favorite recipe. You cannot stand over his or her shoul- der to make sure the recipe is followed to your exact specifications. However, if savvy cooks make improvements to the recipe, they can be passed to you the next time you meet, making your version of the recipe better. Te same is true with open source. If others in the community make improvements to the code, they can easily share them with the development team to incorporate into the official version. And that is just what happened.
MORE EYES, MORE UPDATES, STRONGER SOFTWARE
Sharing network security software on open source forums yields dual benefits: Other security teams get a tool to keep their networks secure, and the overall quality of the product is improved as others download, debug and upgrade it. (Image by U.S. Army Acquisition Support Center)
domain name lookups, reassembled website requests or decoded malware traffic.
According to Tracy Braun, a computer scientist in the Network Security Branch of ARL and the team lead for the Dshell project, the ability to customize the tool and quickly share the changes within its small community made it a good candidate for open sourcing to the wider scientific community.
ARL released Dshell to GitHub, one of many websites that hosts repositories for open source content, for two primary reasons. First, Dshell is a useful tool for keeping networks safe. By sharing it with the world, more security teams gain another specialized tool to keep their networks secure. It improves ARL local secu- rity by improving the security of the Internet as a whole. Te second is common to all open source software: to improve the quality of the tool by increasing the number of skilled eyes look- ing for bugs and potential improvements throughout the code.
GitHub was chosen for Dshell also because it allows members to easily download software code and store edits they make, and provides a mechanism to offer feedback to the original software authors.
90 Army AL&T Magazine January-March 2017
As of June 2016, users have created more than 11,000 copies of the Dshell tool and have offered 62 suggested modifications. Te shared modifications, formally named “pull requests,” do exactly what was hoped. Community members found and fixed bugs that the Dshell team missed, and even added new features that improve ARL’s ability to detect malicious actors. Addition- ally, rolling the enhancements into the official version makes it easier to share the software across organizations. Instead of emailing files or sending CDs, collaborators can be pointed to the GitHub page to download the latest updates.
OPEN SOURCE EXPANSION Some agencies, like NASA, adopted open source early. In 2014, NASA released more than 1,000 of its projects in one mass distribution. Others—like the National Security Agency, the National Guard and the Air Force Research Laboratory—joined more recently.
Te most all-inclusive DOD guidance for open source soft- ware came from the DOD CIO in 2009. Te memorandum addressed a popular misconception that open source software is forbidden by the DOD Information Assurance Policy.
Cem Karan, a computer engineer at ARL working to develop ARL’s formal open source process, described the more realistic hurdles for releasing Dshell and other ARL projects. “As an individual, open sourcing software means simply adding a user name and an email address, and then uploading or downloading software as I wish. Conversely, if I publish on behalf of ARL, I
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