this post was submitted on 17 Nov 2023
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Free and Open Source Software

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What's stopping banks from creating FOSS (or atleast open-source) banking solutions (apps)? (fost.hu)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by nIi7WJVZwktT4Ze@fost.hu to c/foss@beehaw.org
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Let's say, I create a bank with the caveat that all of my banking phone apps and webapps are FOSS (or if they depend on non-free components — banks probably do to communicate with each other —, then just OSS). Am I going to be behind the competition by doing this?

If the most secure crypto algorithms are the ones that are public, can we ensure the security of a bank's apps by publicizing it?

Are they not doing this because they secretly collect a lot of data (on top of your payment history because of the centralized nature of card payments) through these apps?

EDIT: Clarifying question: Is there a technical reason they don't publicize their code or is it just purely corporate greed and nothing else?

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[–] jamesravey@lemmy.nopro.be 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There is also a lot of "security by obscurity" in the corporate/fintech world - "it's open source so everyone can see the code which makes it less secure". The inverse is often true thanks to Linus's Law.

[–] wisplike_sustainer@suppo.fi 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The inverse is often true thanks to Linus’s Law.

The article you linked seems to suggest that Linus's Law is a mere suggestion, at best.

No one is suggesting that open source is inherently less secure, just that the vulnerabilities are easier to find, and thus easier to get exploited. For a third party reviewer there's a lot of incentive not to report bugs they would find in banking software.

[–] jamesravey@lemmy.nopro.be 8 points 11 months ago

No one is suggesting that open source is inherently less secure

Unfortunately, I've met a number of people who genuinely do believe this! The same demographic who don't know how copy and paste works or take photos of stuff on their monitor instead of print-screening and tend to end up running large corporations even though they're completely out of touch.