This hack wasn't really a failure of code construction but a failure of institutional practices. The same thing could have happened if SolarWinds had a garbagy

This hack wasn't really a failure of code construction but a failure of institutional practices. The same thing could have happened if SolarWinds had a garbagy sys admin tool that happened to also be open source but still otherwise followed the procedures of SolarWinds. Giant bureaucracies have a bunch of tasks they need to accomplish. Giant bureaucracies hire poorly trained people to accomplish those tasks and buy software to aid it's those people in accomplishing those tasks. The software is sold "by the feature" so it is colloquially "garbage" that is itself produced as cheaply as necessary to achieve these features. Naturally, such garbage is constantly updated and all these giant bureaucracies are sieves with these updates running through them. Sure, if these bureaucracies hired competent people, downloaded open source tools, tested the tools themselves and essentially had their own quality control in-house, this might not have happened. But that wouldn't be the out-sourcing-based, cut costs and skills to the bone, neoliberal paradigm that's near and dear to the high level managers' heart, now would it? Now, you would think that an event like this would create a realization "what we do is too important for outsourcing, for bargain-basement, neoliberal style operations". But the Office of Personnel Management hack [1] was what should have created this realization and didn't. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management...