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Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2024 23:49:42 -0000 (UTC)
From: Tavis Ormandy <taviso@...il.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh server compromise
On 2024-03-29, Marc Deslauriers wrote:
>> I think we should have a policy that if issues are suspected to be actively exploited, that the issue goes public immediately. If even there is no patch or mitigation, there's not a lot of benefit to keeping it private.
>
> In this case, we had no reason to believe it was being actively exploited.
>
Yeah... but you also have no reason to not believe that?
What do you propose they were doing with their backdoor?
> If you make it public before a patch or mitigation is available, it has now gone
> from a single entity being able to exploit it to the whole world being able to
> exploit it.
>
> That's a whole lot worse.
>
Okay, but do we agree that if there is a mitigation available, it's better
for it to be public?
Isn't doing `dnf downgrade xxx` a mitigation, or `systemctl xxx stop`?
>>
>> I think everyone was acting in good faith here and did great work, but there wasn't a clear policy for handling this type of issue.
>
>
> I would argue against having a policy requiring something like this to be made
> public immediately. The important thing here is to do whatever it takes to make
> sure users are secure as fast as possible, not expose them to even bigger attack
> surface with no mitigation available.
>
> Marc.
We all want users to be secure as fast as possible. The discussion is
whether keeping backdoors embargoed helps achieve that.
Tavis.
--
_o) $ lynx lock.cmpxchg8b.com
/\\ _o) _o) $ finger taviso@....org
_\_V _( ) _( ) @taviso
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