EU to perform security audits of KeePass and Apache HTTP Server

Two open source projects, KeePass and Apatche HTTP Server, are to get a free security audit from the European Union following a public vote.

The audits, and the survey that spawned them, are part of the EU-Free and Open Source Software Auditing (EU-FOSSA) project, which is designed to improve the security of free software used by the European Commission and European Parliament.

EU-FOSSA was launched in January 2015 by German Pirate Party MEP Julia Reda and Swedish Green Party MEP Max Andersson with the intention of improving the security of free software and demonstrating that "security and freedom aren't opposites".

After announcing that an initial 1 million had been secured for the pilot project, Reda said in a blog post in December 2014: "I want the European Union to focus its energy and funds on projects that increase both the safety and the autonomy of its people at the same time.

"In my view, government should tend heavily towards using and supporting open source software. Your state shouldn't run on code more accessible to intelligence agencies than to you. Any software a government pays for should be open source: Through its actions, government should enrich the commons, not any specific corporation."

Firefox, Apache Tocat, Drupal, VLC Media Player and Git client were among 18 pieces of software put to a public vote as to which should be the first to have their code audited. More than 3,200 responses were received, with KeePass (23.1 per cent) and Apache HTTP Server (18.7 per cent) receiving the greatest individual proportions of the vote.

The audits themselves, which will take place over the next few weeks, will be carried out by the IT departments of both the European Parliament and the European Commission, with some testing also being carried out by consultancy firm Everis, which will be reporting any bugs found back to the teams behind KeePass and Apache.