Re: RFC: Starting a stable kernel series off the 2.6 kernel

Horst von Brand
2005-12-06T02:24:10Z

Florian Weimer <fw@deneb.enyo.de> wrote:

[...]

> You mentioned security issues in your initial post. I think it would
> help immensely if security bugs would be documented properly (affected
> versions, configuration requirements, attack range, loss type etc.)
> when the bug is fixed, by someone who is familiar with the code.
> (Currently, this information is scraped together mostly by security
> folks, sometimes after considerable time has passed.) Having a
> central repository with this kind of information would enable vendors
> and not-quite-vendors (people who have their own set of kernels for
> their machines) to address more vulnerabilties promptly, including
> less critical ones.

I've fixed bugs which turned out to be security vulnerabilities. And I
didn't know (or even care much) at the time. Finding out if some random bug
has security implications, and exactly which ones/how much of a risk they
pose is normally /much/ harder than to fix the bugs. And rather pointless,
after the fix is in.
--
Dr. Horst H. von Brand User #22616 counter.li.org
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