Full Disclosure mailing list archives
Re: [Full-disclosure] [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy
From: "Elazar Broad" <elazar () hushmail com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:35:21 -0400
I could understand why Linus is against classifying a commit comment in his branch or in a any unstable branch for that matter...then again, the repositories are open, and anyone with half a brain might be able to discern what has security ramifications or not. On the other hand classifying commit comments in stable branch(es) is a must, and the lack of CVE identifiers is very troublesome. Well, if they aren't going to do it, its up to the community to point it out, get the issues tracked in SecurityFocus and the like so that people know that its out there and the distros along with the general public don't have to rely on "HIGHLY SUGGESTED THAT YOU UPGRADE" announcements from the kernel maintainers without knowing why. Elazar On Thu, 17 Jul 2008 06:57:57 -0400 Dave Aitel <dave () immunityinc com> wrote:
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
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Current thread:
- Re: [Full-disclosure] [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Elazar Broad (Jul 17)
- Re: [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Paul Schmehl (Jul 17)
- <Possible follow-ups>
- Re: [Full-disclosure] [Dailydave] Linux's unofficial security-through-coverup policy Elazar Broad (Jul 17)