The importance of updates: constantly vigilant
The transparent nature of open source software gives us a significant advantage regarding system security. However, it’s important to understand that all software has bugs and the potential to exploit our systems. Security vulnerabilities usually surface because the code evolves and changes over time.
It is possible that a malicious developer intentionally introduces exploitable code, such as the XZ example from Chapter 3. Thankfully, those types of attacks are incredibly rare.
Due to how usage evolves, code that was safe when it was developed initially could become exploitable later. The important thing to understand is while software isn’t perfect, it’s essential to ensure you apply, at a minimum, all critical security updates.
But how do we know what a critical security update is?
Thankfully, we have well-established mechanisms for reporting such vulnerabilities and tracking their status. Let...
