DARPA's Concerns Over Trust in Open Source Software for National Security

Jul 14, 2022 •

Brittany Day

1 min read

Topics Covered

open source national security Linux kernel software security DARPA trust

Open-source code runs on every computer on the planet—and keeps America’s critical infrastructure going. DARPA is worried about how well it can be trusted.

It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the whole world is built on top of the Linux kernel—although most people have never heard of it.

It is one of the very first programs that load when most computers power up. It enables the hardware running the machine to interact with the software, governs its use of resources, and acts as the foundation of the operating system.

It is the core building block of nearly all cloud computing, virtually every supercomputer, the entire internet of things, billions of smartphones, and more.