Xen security issues

Xen security issues

[AL13N]

I'm the Mageia maintainer and i'm a bit behind on patching CVE-* .

can anyone help me find out which of these are actually applicable for 4.1.2?

https://wiki.mageia.org/en/XenCVE

atm, i'm only worried about the cauldron version 4.1.2 of Mga3 (last column).

thanks in advance...

Re: Xen security issues

[Ian Campbell]

On Sun, 2013-04-14 at 08:05 +0100, AL13N wrote:
> I'm the Mageia maintainer and i'm a bit behind on patching CVE-* .
> 
> can anyone help me find out which of these are actually applicable for 4.1.2?

You can find a list of the already public Xen security announcements,
with CVE numbers and links to advisories, patches etc at:

http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Security_Announcements

You should also consider asking to be on the vulnerability predisclosure
list as described at:

http://www.xen.org/projects/security_vulnerability_process.html

Ian.

Re: Xen security issues

[AL13N]

Op zondag 14 april 2013 11:15:03 schreef Ian Campbell:
> On Sun, 2013-04-14 at 08:05 +0100, AL13N wrote:
> > I'm the Mageia maintainer and i'm a bit behind on patching CVE-* .
> > 
> > can anyone help me find out which of these are actually applicable for
> > 4.1.2?
> You can find a list of the already public Xen security announcements,
> with CVE numbers and links to advisories, patches etc at:
> 
> http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Security_Announcements

the problem is not finding the patches :-)

the problem is which in those huge lists are actually applicable to that 
specific version: xen-4.2.1

or more, which aren't applicable :-).

> You should also consider asking to be on the vulnerability predisclosure
> list as described at:
> 
> http://www.xen.org/projects/security_vulnerability_process.html
> 
> Ian.

good idea...

Re: Xen security issues

[Andrew Cooper]

On 14/04/2013 19:35, AL13N wrote:
> Op zondag 14 april 2013 11:15:03 schreef Ian Campbell:
>> On Sun, 2013-04-14 at 08:05 +0100, AL13N wrote:
>>> I'm the Mageia maintainer and i'm a bit behind on patching CVE-* .
>>>
>>> can anyone help me find out which of these are actually applicable for
>>> 4.1.2?
>> You can find a list of the already public Xen security announcements,
>> with CVE numbers and links to advisories, patches etc at:
>>
>> http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Security_Announcements
> the problem is not finding the patches :-)
>
> the problem is which in those huge lists are actually applicable to that 
> specific version: xen-4.2.1
>
> or more, which aren't applicable :-).


http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_4.2_Release_Notes

Xen 4.2 was released on 17 Sept 2012.  XSA-19 and earlier where older
than that, so are not applicable.  XSA-20 and newer all specifically
refer to xen-4.2-testing and whether it is vulnerable or not.

Although now I note that you might have transposed 4.1.2.

So the 4.1 release notes puts 4.1.2 on 21 Oct 2011.  However, I would
highly recomend moving forwards to 4.1.4 or even newer.  4.1.x is in
maintenance now and is only receiving bugfixes, but being OS software,
there is still a steady stream of bugfixes being backported.

~Andrew

Re: Xen security issues

[M A Young]

On Sun, 14 Apr 2013, AL13N wrote:

> Op zondag 14 april 2013 11:15:03 schreef Ian Campbell:
>> On Sun, 2013-04-14 at 08:05 +0100, AL13N wrote:
>>> I'm the Mageia maintainer and i'm a bit behind on patching CVE-* .
>>>
>>> can anyone help me find out which of these are actually applicable for
>>> 4.1.2?
>> You can find a list of the already public Xen security announcements,
>> with CVE numbers and links to advisories, patches etc at:
>>
>> http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Security_Announcements
>
> the problem is not finding the patches :-)
>
> the problem is which in those huge lists are actually applicable to that
> specific version: xen-4.2.1

At some point you will have to read through the advisories as some are 
only for specific versions and some are fixes to xen code in the kernel 
but you can narrow the process down by seeing when xen-4.2.1 (or 
xen-4.1.2) was released as it would contain all relevant security fixes up 
to that point. The source repositories would give you the exact order.

If you want to start from a clean slate, 4.1.5 and 4.2.2 look like they 
will come out soon, so you would just need to watch for new security 
updates after that point to keep them secure.

 	Michael Young

Re: Xen security issues

[Ian Campbell]

On Sun, 2013-04-14 at 19:35 +0100, AL13N wrote:
> Op zondag 14 april 2013 11:15:03 schreef Ian Campbell:
> > On Sun, 2013-04-14 at 08:05 +0100, AL13N wrote:
> > > I'm the Mageia maintainer and i'm a bit behind on patching CVE-* .
> > > 
> > > can anyone help me find out which of these are actually applicable for
> > > 4.1.2?
> > You can find a list of the already public Xen security announcements,
> > with CVE numbers and links to advisories, patches etc at:
> > 
> > http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Security_Announcements
> 
> the problem is not finding the patches :-)
> 
> the problem is which in those huge lists are actually applicable to that 
> specific version: xen-4.2.1
> 
> or more, which aren't applicable :-).

I'm afraid there is no shortcut to going through the list. Each entry
contains a link to the advisory. The advisory will contain a description
of versions which are affected and the appropriate patches. The list
also contains links to the patches applied to the affected trees (at
least those which were still security supported at the time).

As others have also suggested you can prefilter the list based on
publication dates vs the release date of the base version of Xen which
you are using since a new stable branch will contain a roll up of the
relevant previous security updates. But watch out for the fact that the
release dates of the advisories are not monotonically increasing, since
sometimes a new issue will go public while another is still in embargo.

Ian.

Re: Xen security issues

[AL13N]

> On 14/04/2013 19:35, AL13N wrote:
>> Op zondag 14 april 2013 11:15:03 schreef Ian Campbell:
>>> On Sun, 2013-04-14 at 08:05 +0100, AL13N wrote:
>>>> I'm the Mageia maintainer and i'm a bit behind on patching CVE-* .
>>>>
>>>> can anyone help me find out which of these are actually applicable for
>>>> 4.1.2?
>>> You can find a list of the already public Xen security announcements,
>>> with CVE numbers and links to advisories, patches etc at:
>>>
>>> http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Security_Announcements
>> the problem is not finding the patches :-)
>>
>> the problem is which in those huge lists are actually applicable to that
>> specific version: xen-4.2.1
>>
>> or more, which aren't applicable :-).
>
>
> http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Xen_4.2_Release_Notes
>
> Xen 4.2 was released on 17 Sept 2012.  XSA-19 and earlier where older
> than that, so are not applicable.  XSA-20 and newer all specifically
> refer to xen-4.2-testing and whether it is vulnerable or not.

Thanks for the pointers, this will make it a lot easier for me!

> Although now I note that you might have transposed 4.1.2.

no, luckily i didn't, mga2 has 4.1.2; while mga3 will have 4.2.1.

> So the 4.1 release notes puts 4.1.2 on 21 Oct 2011.  However, I would
> highly recomend moving forwards to 4.1.4 or even newer.  4.1.x is in
> maintenance now and is only receiving bugfixes, but being OS software,
> there is still a steady stream of bugfixes being backported.

i'll keep this in mind for mga2 . atm, my priority is mga3, though.