oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: Closed list
From: Josh Bressers <bressers () redhat com>
Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 07:10:23 -0400 (EDT)
----- Original Message -----
"security updates" and "public advisories" aren't the same thing, That's not just a semantic distinction. There's many s vendors who release security updates, but not necessarily public advisories on them. They may have constituencies that would simply get confused by advisories, or they have auto-update mechanisms, or part of their support model involves pushing their customers to keep up with all fixes, security or otherwise. They may simply thing that advisories are a waste of time because customers don't read. For linux-distros, I think what you really want to go for here are *timely* updates. If a distro isn't generally capable of producing a security update within, say, a month of when the issue was released, then their getting the issue in advance through linux-distros isn't going to do them or their distro community a lot of good because they have other constraints in getting fixes out the door. Focusing on how you think an update ought to *look* (e.g. should the advisories be public?) isn't as important as the update getting *out*. Especially since you're dealing with GPL'ed code, I think that's something you can measure. Just ask the constituency a month or so after some major kernel issue who has released updates/fixes and who hasn't, show the relevant source, and take it from there.
I think the whole point comes down to how can you prove you've updated what you claim you have? It doesn't matter *what* is public, just as long as something is (and it needs to be reasonable, expecting others to dig through source would be silly). If someone is untrustworthy and using a private list inappropriately, do you really think they're going to tell the truth if they're asked about releasing timely updates? Clearly advisories are the easiest way to verify this, but if someone has a better idea that includes verifiable information, please speak up. Thanks. -- JB
Current thread:
- Re: Closed list, (continued)
- Re: Closed list Tomas Hoger (May 17)
- Re: Closed list Solar Designer (May 02)
- Re: Closed list Jan Lieskovsky (May 16)
- Re: Closed list Solar Designer (May 16)
- Re: Closed list zardoz (Apr 01)
- Re: Closed list Solar Designer (Apr 01)
- Re: Closed list Stefan Behte (Apr 06)
- Re: Closed list Solar Designer (Apr 12)
- Re: Closed list Mike O'Connor (Apr 13)
- Re: Closed list Tomas Hoger (Apr 14)
- Re: Closed list Josh Bressers (Apr 14)
- Re: Closed list akuster (Apr 14)
- Re: Closed list Patrick J. Volkerding (Apr 14)
- Re: Closed list Oracle Security Alerts (Apr 26)
- Re: Closed list Solar Designer (Apr 30)
- Re: Closed list Tomas Hoger (May 17)
- Re: Closed list Oracle Security Alerts (May 17)
- Re: Closed list Solar Designer (Jun 01)
- Re: Closed list Tomas Hoger (Jun 16)
- Re: Closed list Tomas Hoger (Jun 16)
- Re: Closed list Solar Designer (Apr 30)