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Date: Tue, 23 Nov 2010 12:00:51 -0500
From: Dan Rosenberg <dan.j.rosenberg@...il.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Linux kernel address leaks
For starters, I don't want to turn this into a conversation about
CVEs. The point of my post was to generate discussion on a particular
class of information leakage and talk about how to address it.
That said, MITRE's website defines an "exposure" (the "E" in "CVE") as
follows [1]:
"An information security 'exposure' is a system configuration issue or
a mistake in software that allows access to information or
capabilities that can be used by a hacker as a stepping-stone into a
system or network.
CVE considers a configuration issue or a mistake an exposure if it
does not directly allow compromise but could be an important component
of a successful attack, and is a violation of a reasonable security
policy."
I don't think it's appropriate to use CVEs as a blackmailing tool, and
I don't actually think these issues need CVEs. But claiming that it
would be inappropriate to assign them because they're not "security
problems" is a bit misguided. We're not talking about leaking
function addresses here - we're talking about leaking the addresses of
live kernel data structures, which in my opinion is more of a risk.
-Dan
[1] http://cve.mitre.org/about/terminology.html
On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 11:46 AM, Marcus Meissner <meissner@...e.de> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 09:59:13AM +0100, Yves-Alexis Perez wrote:
>> On lun., 2010-11-22 at 18:54 -0500, Michael Gilbert wrote:
>> > Oh, and if you get CVEs assigned, that kind of forces them to fix the
>> > problem, right?
>> >
>> I'm not that sure (there are CVEs for issues considered too small by the
>> developers involved, not only in Linux, which are still opened), and I'm
>> not sure using CVE system for “blackmailing” is a good usage for that
>> tool.
>
> CVEs are for security problems. Leaking kernel function addresses to
> userspace is not a security issue in my opinion.
>
> (Leaking content of kernel memory however is.)
>
> Ciao, Marcus
>
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