Handling kernel security problems
Posted Jul 16, 2008 22:06 UTC (Wed) by
nix (subscriber, #2304)
In reply to:
Handling kernel security problems by tialaramex
Parent article:
Handling kernel security problems
Only someone who relies on "grep" to the exclusion of actual thought
processes would be so obsessed with seeing phrases like "exploitable
overflow" introduced into the Linux changelogs, particularly in places
where the "exploit" is arcane and entirely theoretical
I'd say that this clearly does
not describe the PaX or
grsecurity hackers. They do know their stuff and are quite capable of
identifying security holes without grep (even if they do jump the gun now
and then and identify things as threats that aren't). I suspect that they
think that this
does describe random sysadmins using -stable
kernels, perhaps on the mistaken assumption that most people use Linus's
kernels these days (an understandable assumption for the maintainers of
kernel patches: after all,
they do), and so therefore the -stable
descriptions must be such that the braindead can understand 'upgrade now'.
(Why statements like 'upgrade now' in the -stable kernel announcements are
still considered unacceptable 'coverups' I have no clue.)
(I'd be surprised if there were many braindead people tracking the stable
kernels, myself, but it's an understandable viewpoint.)
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