Live data from Hacker News

New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

bleepingcomputer.com

71–80 of 287 posts

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#71
post #54

udisks, not counting its dependencies, has 265,334 LoC. pmount, in contrast, has 19,978 LoC, or >13x less. sudo, another setuid binary with a lot of policy code, has 210 CVEs / 430.150 kLoC = ~0.5 CVE per kLoC. 57.5% of CVEs have a CVSS >= 7, so 0.5 * 0.575 = 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC. As a back-of-envelope estimate, udisks: 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC * 265.334 kLoC = ~76.28 critical CVEs; pmount: 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC * 19.9780 kLoC = ~5.7…

I can't for the life of me find a list of 210 sudo CVE's. Are you sure this is correct?

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#72
post #2

As someone who has been using linux quite happily on the desktop for more than 20 years now, I have to say it remains an eternal experiment, feature wise as well as security wise.

Re:"Eternal experiment"... have you seen Windows 11? Or even 10? The devs can't keep their hands off of the thing, changing, breaking and fixing every component every few months.

Adding ADs to every possible surface, finding new ways to obfuscate built-in spyware

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#73
post #63
post #54

udisks, not counting its dependencies, has 265,334 LoC. pmount, in contrast, has 19,978 LoC, or >13x less. sudo, another setuid binary with a lot of policy code, has 210 CVEs / 430.150 kLoC = ~0.5 CVE per kLoC. 57.5% of CVEs have a CVSS >= 7, so 0.5 * 0.575 = 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC. As a back-of-envelope estimate, udisks: 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC * 265.334 kLoC = ~76.28 critical CVEs; pmount: 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC * 19.9780 kLoC = ~5.7…

It's incredible to me that sudo has that many LoC. I'd assume it would just ask the OS to execute something without restrictions, not have any logic to do so itself.

OpenDoas, a portable version of OpenBSD's doas, has 4260 LoC while doing most you'd expect. Sudo just has a lot of policy tools that most don't even know about, but add to its surface area.

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#74
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wish I had something like GrapheneOS on desktops (yes I know about Qubes) SecureBlue and Kicksecure are the closest equivalents.

Don't know much about SecureBlue but Kicksecure isn't comparable to Qubes at all. It's a hardened distro, not a way to isolate workloads through virtualisation. Depending on what you're trying to achieve they can both fit but they are fundamentally very different in their approach to security.

> I swear to god reading comprehension is approaching zero due to chatgpt.

> I wish I had something like GrapheneOS on desktops

Secureblue is essentially as close to GrapheneOS as Desktop Linux can get. Neither my response nor the original question required qubes comparisons. It was merely mentioned.

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#75
post #54

udisks, not counting its dependencies, has 265,334 LoC. pmount, in contrast, has 19,978 LoC, or >13x less. sudo, another setuid binary with a lot of policy code, has 210 CVEs / 430.150 kLoC = ~0.5 CVE per kLoC. 57.5% of CVEs have a CVSS >= 7, so 0.5 * 0.575 = 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC. As a back-of-envelope estimate, udisks: 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC * 265.334 kLoC = ~76.28 critical CVEs; pmount: 0.2875 CVE7/kLoC * 19.9780 kLoC = ~5.7…

I can't for the life of me find a list of 210 sudo CVE's. Are you sure this is correct?

I got it from here [0]. I didn't notice it was a keyword search, so it's an overcount. Thanks for correcting me.

Going off its security advisories page [1] and this tracker [2], it seems to be around 43 CVEs, most rated high severity.

So the actual rate would be 43 CVE / 430 kLoC = ~0.01 CVE per kLoC, so ~2.65 CVEs for udisks and ~0.2 for pmount.

[0] https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=sudo

[1] https://www.sudo.ws/security/advisories/

[2] https://security.snyk.io/package/linux/debian%3A10/sudo

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#76
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredible to me that sudo has that many LoC. I'd assume it would just ask the OS to execute something without restrictions, not have any logic to do so itself.

Asking the OS to do something without restrictions is not very difficult; sudo does that by virtue of its existence (it's setuid). The extra code is deciding when not to do that.

[dead]

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#78
post #49
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A big part of the difference is that the BSDs are designed by a governing committee. They usually don't have 15 different solutions for the same problem, but instead 2-3 solutions that work well. The right comparison is not between a particular BSD and Linux, its between a particular BSD and a Linux distro.

I feel the BSDs are much more different from each other than the average Linux distros are.

Average/most popular distros, maybe.

The full range of distros are very different from each other. Consider Void, Alpine, Gentoo, Chimera, NixOS.....

Different C libraries, init systems, different default command line utilities....

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#79

Local privesc, don't care. If anyone still thinks that they can draw a security boundary anywhere with a shared kernel, they should really look at kernel CVE database (and be horrified). For every fancy titled exploit there are twenty that you've never heard of. You can sort of do it if you carefully structure your program to restrict syscall use and then use some minimal and well audited syscall filtering layer to h…

Given this. Why is every linux device not rooted then.

Re: New Linux udisks flaw lets attackers get root on major Linux distros

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's certainly an interesting standpoint. I use both privately and professionally and while I accept that security-wise (even with selinux) they feel lacking , feature-wise they far exceed Windows I use as my other is except in gaming experience. I wish I had something like GrapheneOS on desktops (yes I know about Qubes)

> I wish I had something like GrapheneOS on desktops (yes I know about Qubes) SecureBlue and Kicksecure are the closest equivalents.

No the closest alternative is https://grsecurity.net/
Post reply on HN