Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy
From: Dave Aitel <dave () immunityinc com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:57:57 -0400
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 I think what Brad and the Pax Team are saying here is that: 1. We hold Linux to a higher standard than a company - we expect the term "open source" to apply to more than just the source code. 2. For that reason, the community finds it discomforting when kernel maintainers know that a patch has a serious security ramification and essentially lie about it by neglecting to put that into the patch comments. That's the sort of behavior we expect from a large commercial entity. 3. This only hurts end users, because the hackers already know about it. If the kernel maintainers had read the Microsoft team's SDL book, they'd probably be more up to speed on these things. :> - -dave Brad Spengler wrote: | Valdis, | | Please try to stay consistent with your own arguments. If you defeat | them yourself barely into your third paragraph, you don't give me much | to do! | | To summarize: | |> have any untrusted local users - for instance, my laptop. The only users |> on it are me, myself, and I<, and the guy that owned my webserver, or | the guy that owned my email client, or the guy that owned my audio | player, or the guy that owned my video player, or the guy that owned my | web browser, or the guy that owned my FTP client, or the guy that owned | my PDF reader, or the guy that owned my office application> | | You're a very trusting individual! | | This is exactly why telling someone to update if they have any | "untrusted local users" just doesn't make any sense since it misleads a | majority of users. A better replacement would be "if your machine is | network-connected." How do you own a website if you can't break into it | directly? Find out what other websites are hosted on the same machine, | break into one of them, then locally escalate privileges, giving you | access to all the websites hosted on the machine. If you don't think | this happens, you've got your head in the sand and honestly should just | give up having anything to do with security. | | -Brad | | ------------------------- | | _______________________________________________ | Dailydave mailing list | Dailydave () lists immunitysec com | http://lists.immunitysec.com/mailman/listinfo/dailydave -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFIfyW1tehAhL0gheoRAr4tAJ9rZC6R+mwefYPhh3lnRZdk2O15ZgCfW+Mk 1QvFrE/h52PTxvUUEMY6SUY= =/ydX -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
Current thread:
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy, (continued)
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Valdis . Kletnieks (Jul 16)
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Brad Spengler (Jul 16)
- Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Blue Boar (Jul 17)
- Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy staff (Jul 17)
- Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Joel Jose (Jul 18)
- Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Valdis . Kletnieks (Jul 18)
- Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Joel Jose (Jul 18)
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Brad Spengler (Jul 16)
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Valdis . Kletnieks (Jul 16)
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Brad Spengler (Jul 16)
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coveruppolicy Garrett Groff (Jul 16)
- Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Dave Aitel (Jul 17)
- Re: [Full-disclosure] [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Steve Grubb (Jul 17)
- Re: Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Brad Spengler (Jul 17)