Re: Fw: What's wrong with this code?

[Shachar Shemesh]

Tal, Shachar wrote:

While agreeing with most of your post, I can testify to previously working
for a company with a state-of-the-art ClearCase implementation. Each R&D
team has it's own branch to work on, and only the integration team merged
files from these branches to our /main branch.
Would you say that this prevents a single developer, on a whim, from 
introducing a backdoor?

Furthermore, each feature had
its own branch, which was merged to relevant team branches once matured and
tested. Yes, this definitely isn't ClearCase 101, but I agree with Shachar
that the companies (in Israel, anyway) using a good version control system
and matching procedures can be counted on one hand of former army Engineer.
 

I was also making the point that, even if all procedures were in place, 
a backdoor can still be introduced. See my next sentance from my 
original mail.

In any case, assuming the developer is qualified to write production 
code, they can write code that gets CPU time on a client's 
machine. As 
such, they can backdoor the product.

In short - there is plenty room for a single developer to backdoor a 
commercial product. This goes for any commercial environment.
   

..

As such, it is worth noting that I am yet to see a commercial company 
where, as a rule, one developer does not have source code 
access to the 
entire company's product suite. There are exceptions (a release the 
company is trying to keep a secret, government contracts, clean room 
reverse engineering), but they are just that - exceptions.
   

Again, here you're wrong. The company I work for currently does not allow
engineers access to code they have no business reading in the first place.
Of course, a malicious programmer can always social engineer his way into
getting access to the code.
 

Hmm. Doesn't your company fall under the second case in my "exceptions" 
list?

               Shachar

--
Shachar Shemesh
Open Source integration consultant
Home page & resume - http://www.shemesh.biz/


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