FOSSPicks
FOSSPicks

Nate explores the top FOSS tools, including the latest KDE desktop, an ASCII art creator, a nostalgic homage to Quake, and the very latest secure browsers.
Open Dangers
As 2025 dawned, I was surprised to see an email in my inbox entitled "The Overlooked Risks of Open Source Software in Industrial Security" from a popular cybersecurity platform. The thrust of the argument was that open source adoption was dangerous due to bad actors potentially contributing malicious code.
Of course, I understand that proprietary software developers need to sell their products. Still, given the public scrutiny to which popular FOSS is subjected, it's unlikely that a version containing malicious code would go undetected for long. There's also nothing stopping companies from hiring developers to vet and customize open source code to their needs. Going closed source is certainly no guarantee of safety. At DEF CON 32, researcher Moritz Abrell recently revealed major flaws in an industrial remote-access gateway supposedly renowned for its security.
Of course, Microsoft engineer Andres Freund also discovered a back door in the open source xz utility last year. Still, it took around three years for bad actor "Jia Tan" to work himself into a position of trust and make obfuscated changes to the code. While Abrell hasn't revealed the time it took him to run a similar exploit on proprietary systems, it's safe to say he was able to do so considerably faster.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.
-
RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
-
Happy Birthday, Linux
On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
-
VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
-
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
-
Debian 13.0 Officially Released
After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
-
Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
-
A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.