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Discussion on: What’s the most under-appreciated software?

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Tim Downey • Edited

Probably something like openssl. It is responsible for so much of the security provided by TLS that we take for granted on the web and is maintained by just a few people.

It is used by over two thirds of websites and a single vulnerability in it cause cause widespread damage.

There's a lot of other critical infrastructure software that falls in this category too.

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Maximilian Burszley

Not sure how much "appreciation" openssl deserves these days. I think the general rule is you don't implement security yourself and everyone has taken that to an extreme with the particular tool.

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Michiel Hendriks

OpenSSL was run by mainly 2 people, and only 1 could almost be fully employed. Where was big tech to support these people?

Sure, there have been a bunch of major bugs in it. Just like other SSL/TLS libraries.

So yes, OpenSSL is underappreciated.