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KS2010: SecurityKS2010: SecurityPosted Nov 5, 2010 15:07 UTC (Fri) by spender (subscriber, #23067)In reply to: KS2010: Security by Lionel_Debroux Parent article: KS2010: Security
> * On the one hand, to the taste of a number of security researchers (represented here by one member both significant and vocal ;-) ), mainline (Linus' tree) isn't doing enough for security. On the other hand, to the taste of top kernel devs (represented by at least another significant member here), the grsecurity folks aren't doing much to reduce the gap between mainline and grsecurity. And the status quo is not good for users.
Indeed, the status quo is not good for users. But I don't see how that is the problem of anyone but upstream. I only feel a responsibility toward my own users. Upstream is a lost cause for security, as far as I'm concerned. It's a waste of my time to deal with them and their narrow-minded view of security. If in the future they grow up and deal with security properly, then we'll re-evaluate working with them. As it stands, they continue to have the mentality that security just involves fixing bugs (which fits with the 'a bug is a bug' tautological stupidity).
And as I said earlier, when you go looking for "successes," it's mostly just them accepting trivial one-line patches for security issues found en masse via grep. What happens is quite different when a patch doesn't accompany the vulnerability report. So I reject this entire business of "the grsecurity folks aren't doing much to reduce the gap between mainline and grsecurity" -- it's not our job or what we want to be spending our time on.
> * It's sad that several hundreds low-controversy one-/few-liners from the huge grsecurity patch, which can be imported to mainline more easily than lots of other patches, without demonstrable performance or size penalty, remains developed outside of mainline.
They prefer smaller patches, except when they don't. Look at the const patchset. First it wasn't split up enough, they complained, then somehow even though it was split up exactly as they asked, they complained that it was now split up too much. Sorry, but I view it as a failure of Linux if security improvements are dependent upon benevolent individuals with unlimited amounts of time to waste and an iron will.
-Brad
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KS2010: Security Posted Nov 5, 2010 15:16 UTC (Fri) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
thank you for the clear statement.
if you don't feel and responsibility for anyone but your users and have no intent to try and push the fixes upstream,then your tree just became pretty irrelavent to linux security for anyone except for your users.
some people may choose to try and parse things apart to get them upstream, but very few people will want to try, so the security fixes that get into the kernel will be developed independantly (even though you will make a lot of noise each time someone recreates your work)
if you don't care about normal linux users, only your users, please quiet down about upstreams's policies, you've just said you don't care about anyone that uses it, so why should you care about it's policies?
KS2010: Security Posted Nov 5, 2010 15:35 UTC (Fri) by spender (subscriber, #23067) [Link]
Because upstream's policies affect me and my users? I don't really need to explain the hierarchy and why "upstream" is called "upstream", do I?
-Brad
KS2010: Security Posted Nov 5, 2010 15:55 UTC (Fri) by PaXTeam (subscriber, #24616) [Link]
> if you don't feel and responsibility for anyone but your users [...]
so first it's our fault that our code isn't accepted in vanilla for whatever reasons then it's also our fault that we still dare to make it available for anyone who cares. and to crown the absurdity, we're at fault for caring about these people. man, are you sure you have anything to do with security? i'm seriously worried about *your* users.
> [...]and have no intent to try and push the fixes upstream
maybe you're not a native speaker, but if you re-read spender's post carefully, you'll note that he made the cooperation conditional. it's the sentence that starts with the 'if' word, i'm sure you'll be able to find all one instance of it.
> [...]then your tree just became pretty irrelavent to linux security for anyone except for your users.
wait, are you saying grsec *was* relevant up to this very moment in time for anyone but grsec users? wow, i take it you won't elaborate but i smell magic here.
> even though you will make a lot of noise each time someone recreates your work
only if they 'forget' to credit the people for the ideas and/or the code or if they fuck up the implementation. just ask ingo ;).
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