In programming, you have true and false, and generally things fall into one or the other category with no human input.
In law, you have concepts like "reasonable", and a whole lot of human input, by design.
So my expectation would be that if software vendors were to be held responsible for bugs in their products, the standard they would be expected to adhere to would be "reasonable expectation of proper functioning", with humans intepreting what "reasonable" means.
Change the phrase "software bug" to "engineering error". Then consider the liabilities involved with the manufacture of any real-world-might-kill-someone product. The lawyer's view starts to make a helluva lot more sense.
Millions of malicious people constantly attacking it with cheap equipment from a distance with little chance of being caught doing so?
For one thing, we would be much more conservative in how we wrote code. Libraries would be vetted, with insurance contracts attached to them. Programming languages would not allow for dynamic data, type coercion, or weak typing. In the 80s, rather than C rising to prominence, Ada would have. Haskell would be our generations Javascript, and XHTML would have won over HTML5 simple because guessing how rendering should work would open up a browser maker to high fines and lawsuits.
We'd have to rewrite our entire software stack from the ground up. It's not impossible, but we'd have to view it as a multi-decade transition like how the chemical industry was slowly forced to not use heavily polluting procedures.
There is tradition, but a lot of it military in origin, not civil: ARPA net, Grace Hopper, and the first bug, Turing and the Enigma. Stealworking as a military secret in comparison is thousands of years old. And so far, leaked DB content has per the official record not killed anyone ... perhaps a few astronauts but none of the people responsible in place to fix it, as would be the case in a family of incorporated electricians.
We need a code-code.
Manufacturers should be liable for the poor quality of the devices they make. Software vulnerabilities are a fact of life, because there is no driving force to be better. Strict liability would force the industry to be more like other engineering disciplines.
There is a line somewhere, and beyond that line is negligence. A developer exposing a potential vulnerability in an internal service that does not handle sensitive information is clearly not across that line, a company that creates routers that constantly have serious holes, that handle sensitive information, seems clearly on the other side.
Deciding exactly where that line exists is obviously complex.
>>> Everyone deploying it is liable.
> I've been shipping production software for years...
Have you ever shipped software which depends on openssl? If not, then pretend that you have. Since you believe that you are liable, can you give me a ballpark of how much money you think you personally should be sued for because you deployed something using openssl?
> Since you believe that you are liable, can you give me a ballpark of how much money you think you personally should be sued for because you deployed something using openssl?
This is a really ridiculous question. I've already stated that these things are complicated - you're asking for a hard number?
Companies should take responsibility for their users data, which includes understanding the risk involved in third party libraries they use.
If they're concerned about fees, invest in the security of the project you're using.
But this is all based on some hypothetical, undefined 'law', so arguing about the specific mechanics is pointless.
> you're asking for a hard number?
No, I am not asking for a hard number, I specifically asked for a ballpark.
> invest in the security of the project you're using
I agree, but slapping fines of developers for using openssl to enhance security makes it a bit hard for anyone to afford putting any extra money towards security
> arguing about the specific mechanics is pointless
Agreed, my goal is not to flesh out the mechanics, it is to demonstrate the pitfalls of such a law. I'm only asking for a ballpark (again, not a hard number) so that you can personally understand why you and every other serious developer would be sued out of existence unless you propose obscenely small fines (which would make the whole idea useless, because then developers could easily afford to be negligent without getting too much of an increase in fines).
Yes, and it's a fake law that doesn't exist. How would I possibly answer this?
Off handedly, I'd say that the fine could really range depending on a lot of things. Was this an outdated version of OpenSSL that they just didn't patch? Was it a programmer error using the library? A 0day? All of these things would probably make a big different - charging companies for 0days in 3rd party code, in at least many cases, would not make sense.
> I agree, but slapping fines of developers for using openssl to enhance security makes it a bit hard for anyone to afford putting any extra money towards security
At some point if companies can't afford to keep users safe maybe they just shouldn't be companies. And if we're talking about router companies, they have the cash.
> why you and every other serious developer would be sued out of existence unless you propose obscenely small fines
I would imagine instead that companies would have insurance around these issues to cover developers, but again, the legal components of this are not something I'd want to get into since I'm not qualified to.
Well you've just made the workaround trivial. Open source the majority of everything under a separate org and then use that stuff from the product being shipped. Therefore any vulns are not their problem.
>And if we're talking about router companies, they have the cash
I don't think you understand how tiny the margins are in consumer networking gear. Lowest price dominates.
>the legal components of this are not something I'd want to get into since I'm not qualified to.
Suggesting they be liable is a legal component.
you mean like, say, routing all of the traffic from my system to the internet?
We don’t need hardware and software costs spirally out of control like healthcare because of the liability. If device makers would just support their products (bug fixes) for 10(?) years I think that would do it.