Andrew

Santtu: Discussion on threatened targets will cover the threats posed by integration of computer systems into an ever increasing number of devices and areas where the effect of attacks may extend from disruption of service and to life threatening. such as health and financial record management, everyday appliances, and military equipment.

Andrew proposed: This chapter examines who is ultimately responsible for the costs incurred through security flaws and exploitations? How does this differ when the software is produced by corporations, individuals or an open sourced project? What kind of incentives are there for companies/open source groups to produce more reliable software? Can these incentives be improved?

Responsibility should scale with the importance of usage. Does a click-wrap license or a disclaimer in an OSS license indemnify the creator of the software of all responsiblity? Do corporate products incur more liability than OSS projects? What responsibility does a software vendor have to society? If a single vendor holds a significant portion of the market is there a greater responsibility to protect the users of this network? Software which controls critical societal infrastructure (such as an automobile, a power plant or a voting machine) is at the far end of this scale. Are governments choosing software responsibly?

What incentives exist to produce secure software? Would legal liability be a greater incentive or a disincentive to innovate? Would anyone produce important but risky software if their company were potentially liable for all damages resulting from usage of that software?

Specific examples

Software is a combinatorially complex problem. (Knuth). But what happens when we employ something which is increasingly complex to perform a simple task?