Systemd v228 local root exploit

161–162 of 162 posts

Re: Systemd v228 local root exploit

#161

Post by JdeBP » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 9:47 AM UTC

cestith wrote: post #123

JdeBP wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

van Smoorenburg init dates from 1992. Considering its bug history from age 12 to age 25 and comparing that to systemd's bug history from age 5 to age 6 is at the very best misleading. At age 4, van Smoorenburg init was panicking when /etc/inittab had blank lines. At age 6, van Smoorenburg init was having a buffer overflow in init.c fixed. Counting the CVE bugs is a silly approach. It is far better to look at the codi…

Why is it misleading? Why if we had something safe and stable because of its age and refinement is that an excuse to stuff something less mature in its place? Personally I like unit files rather than bespoke Bash scripts, I like dependency-driven parallel startup, and I like getting a daemon watchdog for free. That's about where I'd have ended the feature requests, though. I'd also like it to be roughly as secure as…

For the reasons given. Read again, properly. Pay particular attention to the statement that counting CVE listings is a silly approach. Then think, and consider that if that alone is silly, what must counting two sets of CVE listings from entirely different parts of two projects' lifetimes be.

Then read on a find a whole lot of better questions to ask. For bonus points, try asking yourself them about various systems. (-:

Re: Systemd v228 local root exploit

#162

Post by qwertyuiop924 » Sat, Jan 28, 2017, 2:23 PM UTC

JdeBP wrote: post #160

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so if Vsinit is stable and bug free right now , why switch to something that isn't? Also, systemd has had two bad exoploits over the course of about a year. The flaws in Vsinit you point out were two years apart, and the former of the two could only be triggered by someone who was already an admin, and gave no opportunity for privesc. Given, init panicking is never acceptable, but it's a heck of a lot better than wha…

Anyone who erroneously thinks that van Smoorenburg rc is bug free hasn't spent time fixing the whole host of faulty, incomplete, and rickety van Smoorenburg rc scripts that exist. It is also erroneous to propound the old There Is Only System 5 init And systemd fallacy, which is just bunkum. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13477512

I'm well aware there are other inits: OpenRC, BSDinit, Runit, s6/s6-rc, and many others are all better alternatives to both sysvinit and systemd. I was making the sysvinit comparison here for simplicity's sake.

>Anyone who erroneously thinks that van Smoorenburg rc is bug free hasn't spent time fixing the whole host of faulty, incomplete, and rickety van Smoorenburg rc scripts that exist.

I never said it was bug-free, I said that the problems with the rc scripts aren't inherent to the sysvinit model.

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