By Nicole Perlroth
The Heartbleed bug that made news last week drew attention to one of the least understood elements of the Internet: Much of the invisible backbone of websites from Google to Amazon to the FBI built by volunteer programmers in what is known as the open-source community. Heartbleed originated in this community, in which these volunteers, connected over the Internet, work together to build free software, to maintain.
wasWhat makes Heartbleed so dangerous, security experts say, is the so-called OpenSSL code it compromised. That code is just one of many maintained by the open-source community. But it plays a critical role in making our computers and mobile devices safe to use.
“This bug was introduced two years ago, and yet nobody took the time to notice it,” said Steven M. Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia University. “Everybody’s job is not anybody’s job.”
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