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Date: Fri, 29 Mar 2024 22:00:40 -0400
From: Marc Deslauriers <marc.deslauriers@...onical.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Re: backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh
server compromise
On 2024-03-29 19:49, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Marc Deslauriers <marc.deslauriers@...onical.com> writes:
>
>> 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.
>
> There is an interesting potential disagreement of interests here, too, in
> that one's ability to respond to a disclosed vulnerability with no
> available updated packages is heavily resource-dependent. Large
> (security-savvy) companies may reasonably prefer disclosure as early as
> possible because they have in-house security teams that follow lists like
> this and are capable of taking immediate action in advance of a general
> fix. However, smaller organizations or individuals who are reliant on
> distributions for notification and patches are potentially more vulnerable
> to any increased attacker activity that might happen due to the public
> announcement and before the availability of updated packages.
>
> That gap could be closed somewhat by distributions sending immediate
> security alerts with mitigations and workarounds once the issue becomes
> public and then following up with alerts once patches are available, at
> the cost of an obvious increase in work and stress for distributions (and
> possible contention of resources between putting out a migitation alert
> and preparing a proper fix).
>
> (Disclosure: I am a member of the Debian project, but I am not a member of
> the Debian security team and am speaking solely for myself here.)
>
The large security-savvy companies I deal with have no interest in getting
0-days dropped on them and are advocating for longer embargoes with
pre-notifications to which we have been pushing back.
Marc.
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