Luciano Bello finds security flaw in the Debian (Ubuntu) operating system

Now that I have your attention, dear reader, let me tell you that this is not about the Luciano Bello in the photo, who, despite his attempts to look intelligent, I don’t think works in computing.

No, the Luciano Bello in question is an Argentine hacker who took the time to read the code of Debian’s OpenSSL implementation and found a pretty serious flaw (Debian is the base of the Ubuntu distribution) and others.

The bug had been there since 2006 and it shows, once again, that free software is not more secure “per se”.

It also shows that the misnamed Linus’s Law isn’t true either, the one coined by Eric Raymond, who claims that with many eyes looking at the code, all bugs are obvious.

The truth is that even with enough eyes, bugs still slip right between the developers’ legs.

The best thing about this whole incident is today’s XKCD strip:

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