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"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6Posted Jun 11, 2008 0:30 UTC (Wed) by PaXTeam (subscriber, #24616)In reply to: "Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 by nix Parent article: Stable kernel 2.6.25.6
how do you know i don't have cause? when you see how https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=194215#c2 turns into this http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-... commit, there is cause.
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"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 Posted Jun 11, 2008 2:51 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] As spooky as it undoubtedly seems to you, the commit messages aren't addressed to PaXTeam (are you actually an individual or a corporate entity?). Unless stated elsewhere they aren't intended as a functional description of the changes (read the source for that), a summary of the security consequences, an entry into a poetry contest, a running commentary on the developer's lunch plans or a source of entropy for a random number generator. On occasion they may serve as one or more of those things, but generally, they're a memo to the developers working on that code. So if they fix a line which incorrectly sets foozle to NULL, don't be surprised if the commit message is "don't touch foozle in baz" rather than "Potential security flaw fixed, NULL dereference PaXTeam take note". If you would like to provide blow-by-blow security commentary for every merge, I suspect at least some people on LKML would welcome it, perhaps to a different list. The general situation is that most bugs involving privileged code will have security consequences. Since any large system, including all the popular general purpose operating systems, will have such bugs, this is not very helpful information.
"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 Posted Jun 11, 2008 8:49 UTC (Wed) by PaXTeam (subscriber, #24616) [Link] you *still* don't understand what i was saying. for the Nth time: i am *not* talking about commits lacking security impact information when it is *not* known at the time of the commit (although one would think that in this age at least a few exploitable bug classes should be known to kernel developers and be recognized and thus documented as such in the commit). what i *am* talking about is commits where the security impact is already *known* yet the commit very deliberately does *not* mention it or tries to downplay it as much as possible. you want proof? the last one i mentioned, look at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=194215#c0 in the Red Hat bugzilla. the actual author of that one was not Marcel Holtmann but Paul Mackerras himself. the problem? Marcel did not quote the full email, he omitted one of the last paragraphs, as you will see below, for a good reason (good for him and other kernel devs trying to evade full disclosure, something they supposedly support, at least when it's for PR purposes, that is): I'd appreciate advice about the best way forward here, and to what degree we should be candid about the reason for the patch in the commit message when it gets committed to Linus' git repository. and candid it became indeed. if you want more juicy stuff, go ask your supposedly honest kernel devs for the kernel security list archives. PS: i hope you're not a kernel contributor, you certainly haven't got a clue about what belongs into a commit message. you also don't have a clue about what bugs have a security impact, it's most certainly not *most bugs*. but i understand, what i've been saying sounds unbelievable to you, so it's easier to attack the messenger, instead of actually checking out the situation for yourself.
"Candid" doesn't mean hidden Posted Jun 11, 2008 9:48 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] What you're talking about is commits which lack security impact information. I explained that commit messages aren't specifically called out as a medium for security impact information. So it doesn't matter if they don't have security impact information, any more than it matters if they don't rhyme. And you've responded to inform me that I "still don't understand" by which, so far as I've been able to discover you mean simply that I didn't agree with you about how terrible this is. Candid means frank and open. You may be confused by seeing it used in the context "candid camera" or "candid photographs" which refer to the fact that the subject isn't aware that they're being watched and so they act candidly. The developers involved decided /not/ to be candid about the bug in your example. You're cross about that, we get it. But you still haven't given me a reason to care. I've encountered this claim that only a handful of bugs have security impact before. It's disappointing, particularly when it comes from someone who claims to actually care about security. I just picked at random a harmless sounding item from the latest stable tree commit logs "eCryptfs: remove unnecessary page decrypt call" ... sounds like it's probably a performance fix? Let's take a look. Oh, the bug overwrites mmap() changes, undoing them. The kernel promises not to do that to you, breaking the promise converts to a security impact because userspace programs that rely on this promise are now broken and their security assumptions are violated.
"Candid" doesn't mean hidden Posted Jun 11, 2008 13:04 UTC (Wed) by PaXTeam (subscriber, #24616) [Link] > "Candid" doesn't mean hidden i never said it did. what Paul was asking the kernel devs was about how honest he should be in the commit. the mind boggles at that very moment as this was on a list whose declared disclosure policy is full-disclosure (see Documentation/SecurityBugs if in doubt). then what do we get in the commit? complete omission of the more serious security impact (arbitrary kernel memory read). you call that whatever you want, i call it dishonesty. it's not terrible per se, it's just it's in direct contradiction to what was communicated to the public before and what this supposedly superiour development model is so proud of among others. as they say, you can't have it both ways. also, this one at least got a CVE that, as far as i know, you can't say about that ptrace bug i posted somewhere above (not even the corresponding -stable commit mentions anything at least yet the -stable guys were fully aware of its impact - this by the way directly contradicts Chris Wright's claim in http://marc.info/?l=linux-kernel&m=121312896523183&... ). > I explained that commit messages aren't specifically called out as a medium for security impact information. says who? 'tialaramex' or is it the agreed-upon (read: documented for the public) commit policy of kernel developers? as for what percentage of kernel bugs have a security impact (or did you mean something other than 'kernel code' by 'privileged code'?), i stand by my claim that it's not *most* of them (i never said 'only a handful' either, nice strawman though). this is based on my personal experience. PS: congratulations on finding yet another silently fixed potential security bug.
"Candid" doesn't mean hidden Posted Jun 11, 2008 17:33 UTC (Wed) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] If you use words in the opposite sense to their correct meaning without any trace of irony then people certainly are entitled to assume that's because you don't actually know what they mean. I see that a dose of your own medicine doesn't suit you. You've several times provided links which actually don't say what you claim they do. This time you suggested that the Linux security list has a policy of full disclosure, when in fact the document you mentioned uses weasel words to declare that disclosure should happen "as soon as possible" which means nothing at all. No congratulations are necessary. I did not find a bug, I just read a randomly chosen commit log. Anyone can do it. Maybe more people should.
"Candid" doesn't mean hidden Posted Jun 11, 2008 21:11 UTC (Wed) by PaXTeam (subscriber, #24616) [Link] i see you're getting sidetracked into various things which is a good sign that i raised valid points you don't contest. > You've several times provided links which actually don't say what you > claim they do. this is a blanket statement without any proof/explanation. elaborate please. > This time you suggested that the Linux security list has > a policy of full disclosure, when in fact the document you mentioned > uses weasel words to declare that disclosure should happen "as soon as > possible" which means nothing at all. said document talks about 'full disclosure', not mere 'disclosure' (nice attempt but you got caught). second, if you cared to read the comment at the bottom of this thread, you'd realize that said document doesn't at all raise the issue of the amount of disclosure, only its potential timing. so we're in agreement that the disclosure policy is 'full disclosure' (and which is what wasn't observed in several cases i cited). i've said nothing else and you haven't contradicted it either. and frankly, if you're not an active party in all this non-or-half-assed-disclosure process, you have zero idea about what you're talking.
"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 Posted Jun 12, 2008 2:47 UTC (Thu) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link] Sorry everyone, I should not have fed the troll.
"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 Posted Jun 12, 2008 3:14 UTC (Thu) by spender (subscriber, #23067) [Link] Clever: when your lies are uncovered (see above post re: "full-disclosure"), you sneak out while claiming the moral high ground. If you're looking for a troll, you need only look in the mirror. -Brad
"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 Posted Jun 12, 2008 19:03 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] This thread really is a confluence of the pointlessly combative, isn't it? There's not an instant's consideration given to the possibility that any disliked event might *not* be due to malice, `lies', `suppression'... sheesh.
"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 Posted Jun 12, 2008 20:49 UTC (Thu) by spender (subscriber, #23067) [Link] One of us is privy to certain insider information, and one of us is not. I'm quite sure you don't know what goes on in the private kernel security mailing lists (I'll include vendorsec in on this as well). After a certain period of time, there's no reason to keep the discussions of these lists private unless the members are embarrassed of the information that would be found. Go ask Linus if he didn't intentionally decide to cover up that ptrace bug mentioned in this thread. I have proof that he did, and that as a result of the coverup no CVE was assigned and the fix was not backported to distro kernels. Go ask the members of the vendorsec list if they haven't been covering up a DoS on the Itanium architecture reported by Intel over a year ago, for which two fixes were provided. The flaw is in hardware so all kernels are vulnerable, and the worst part in this situation is that the vendorsec members collectively agreed not to provide either of the two software fixes for the bug. You claim there's been no proof, but yet I've already pointed out in my previous exploit a clear coverup of what was at least known to the committer to be a local DoS (I demonstrated that it was trivial arbitrary code execution), but the commit message said only "fix sys_tee()" and no CVE was created. So many of those you blindly trust are involved in coverups like these. They erroneously think they can get away with it because they don't think anyone's watching the watchers. So people like Chris Wright will claim in public that there are no coverups, but he knows as we know that he's taken part in it out of the public eye. So I seriously encourage you or anyone else to go ask the people I've mentioned about the specific events I've mentioned. Send this to LKML if you wish. I'll give them the opportunity to give their side of the events in question. It should be clear to from the details I've already released here that this is not a frivolous accusation, and that I'm aware of things they hoped the public would never be aware of. If they choose not to, or continue to lie about what happens behind the scenes, I'll release what information I have. I think they'll be surprised by what is known among certain individuals about what they're doing. I'm probably making enemies from all sides by even mentioning the details above, but in the end a more honest security leadership will only help users of Linux. I'd also like to reiterate the importance of making the discussions of the private kernel security lists public after an agreed upon acceptable amount of time, so that this culture of coverups cannot be allowed to grow any more. -Brad
"Stable" kernel 2.6.25.6 Posted Jun 12, 2008 22:02 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] OK, you're resorting to argument from authority. There's absolutely no point talking to you at all, is there? (And no, I'm not going to go around randomly accusing kernel hackers of coverups and conspiracies. You're the one arguing that point and referring to secret evidence to 'support' your claim, not me.) (I'd agree that the various private security lists should have delayed public archives. Transparency is good, and the only reason to keep those lists private is to prevent the bad guys from responding before the distros do, so after they've responded there's no point keeping the traffic secret anymore.)
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