Bad Maintainance!

Bad Maintainance!

Posted Dec 4, 2003 5:22 UTC (Thu) by iabervon (subscriber, #722)
In reply to: Bad Maintainance! by dlang
Parent article: The brk() vulnerability

For vanilla kernels, I think the best idea is really a patch that applies
to all of the affected versions. Releasing 2.4.23 with that as the only
change is fine for x86 users with standard hardware, but if you're
running on a SA-1110 with a CS integrated NIC that requires a patch that
applies cleanly only to 2.4.8, a patched kernel which is very similar to
2.4.2x isn't going to be very useful. Furthermore, this sort of security
fix is generally only a line or two in a part of the kernel that doesn't
change very much.

What I think should happen in this situation is really that Marcelo
should bless a particular patch as the correct fix for the problem for
each 2.4 release, and kernel.org should distribute it, and it should get
into the next release. Fixing this sort of security problem should really
be orthogonal to the regular kernel development process.

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