Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Software Engineering: 25 worst coding errors

The National Security Agency (NSA), has released its "top 25" list of coding errors that will produce software vulnerable to attack. (See this article from the BBC for an overview.) Anyone serious about developing computer software should take a look at this story and the related links.

If crypto history interests you, the very first set of NSA documents ever put on the World Wide Web concerned the VENONA project, a hand (not computer) break into Soviet ciphers used after 1943. It was responsible for identifying the Rosenbergs and others responsible for sending US atomic secrets to the Soviets, although this fact was not known until many decades after the Rosenbergs were tried and executed for espionage.

If computer-based crypto history interests you, the NSA has a page indexing various articles that include ones about work during WW II breaking German codes with computers. More recent work is not so public. Yet.

No comments: