[HN Gopher] Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting ...
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       Frustrated dev drops three zero-day vulns affecting Apple iOS 15
        
       Author : LinuxBender
       Score  : 136 points
       Date   : 2021-09-26 19:29 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
        
       | saurik wrote:
       | There were a ton of comments about this a few days ago:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28637276
        
       | userbinator wrote:
       | Unfortunately it doesn't sound like these could be used for
       | jailbreaking. Maybe that's why Apple didn't care so much...
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | Apple's acting more and more like a government, also with their
       | regulated app market.
        
       | riknos314 wrote:
       | >he told The Register, "Talking to Apple Product Security is like
       | talking to a brick wall."
       | 
       | >The Register asked Apple to comment, but the brick wall did not
       | respond.
       | 
       | Seems about right.
        
         | TameAntelope wrote:
         | Very presumptuous of me to say this, but I wonder if the "brick
         | wall" a non-technical PR type who has been put in the center of
         | many very technical questions, and has realized that his/her
         | boss doesn't yell at him/her if he/she simply doesn't respond
         | very much to external queries.
         | 
         | It can be hard when your job mostly consists of talking to
         | extremely knowledgable people (such as many researchers in this
         | field are) without yourself being at least broadly knowledgable
         | on nearly everything technical.
        
         | twiceaday wrote:
         | https://tenor.com/view/dono-wall-talking-wall-bricks-gif-177...
        
       | JonathanBeuys wrote:
       | I am always shocked when I find out how lax security is handled
       | even by parties of whom I thought they would take security very
       | serious.
       | 
       | Did you know that you can bypass the lockscreen on Linux Mint by
       | plugging in an external monitor?
       | 
       | https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/9123
       | 
       | Did you know that when you use Chromium on an up-to-date Debian
       | stable, it has over 100 unpatched security holes?
       | 
       | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/status/release/s...
       | 
       | If you cannot trust Debian - whom can you trust? Any suggestions
       | which distro takes security serious?
        
         | bgro wrote:
         | Reminds me of the Windows XP (I think) days where you could
         | bypass the login screen by pressing cancel.
        
           | userbinator wrote:
           | 9x. They were single-user and the credentials were only for
           | network access (file shares etc.) The NT series were all
           | multiuser so that didn't work.
        
         | dharmab wrote:
         | Foxboron on the Arch team is very serious about security. Check
         | out the Security page on the archwiki for guidance on building
         | your own hardened Arch system.
        
         | WastingMyTime89 wrote:
         | > If you cannot trust Debian - whom can you trust?
         | 
         | When did Debian become a model of trustworthiness regarding
         | software security?
         | 
         | We are talking about one of the distributions applying the most
         | patches to its repository for reasons which are often dubious
         | and with little general oversight.
         | 
         | Debian is famous for being run by volunteers but it has always
         | been kind of dodgy. We are talking about the distribution which
         | made it's version of openssl vulnerable by breaking its random
         | generator in order to silence a Valgrind warning.
        
           | orra wrote:
           | Eh, OpenSSL was invoking blatantly undefined behaviour. The
           | diff applied by Debian? GCC and Clang are perfectly entitled
           | to behave the same.
        
             | WastingMyTime89 wrote:
             | But neither GCC nor Clang did and the diff applied by
             | Debian actually triggered the bug without fixing anything.
             | The fact that OpenSSL also happened to be a terrible piece
             | of software doesn't exonerate Debian.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | > Any suggestions how to run a secure Linux machine?
         | 
         | Prevent physical access, install only ssh for external access
         | and run Sshguard. And use Firefox as a browser.
        
           | JonathanBeuys wrote:
           | Hmm.. that is not what I meant. Rephrased it to "Any
           | suggestions which distro takes security serious?" now.
           | 
           | Since it seems that Debian has decided to not patch Chromium
           | for months now, how do I know they won't do the same for
           | Firefox at some point? Or any other software in their repos?
           | 
           | I would prefer a distro which promises to keep all software
           | in their repos secure for a certain amount of time. Even if
           | that means having fewer packages than other distros.
        
             | omnicognate wrote:
             | If bang up to date software is what matters to you,
             | Debian's the opposite of what you want. Maybe try Arch,
             | which operates a rolling release approach and is well known
             | for following the bleeding edge. FWIW, its firefox [1] and
             | chromium [2] packages are currently at the latest versions
             | and were both published on the day of the upstream release.
             | 
             | [1] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/firefox/
             | [2] https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/chromium/
             | (latest update was 24th sept, but there was also a 94
             | version published on 21st, the day of the stable release)
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | Good question. Perhaps NixOS, because it allows you to
             | easily compile your own packages (?)
        
               | edoceo wrote:
               | You're just compiling the same broken code.
        
               | amelius wrote:
               | The idea is that you download the most recent version of
               | the source code of the package.
        
               | tossaway9000 wrote:
               | Its the same problem just at a different point in time.
               | The latest code introduces the latest bugs and security
               | vulnerabilities too.
        
               | edoceo wrote:
               | I'm on Gentoo 15+ years, am familiar with this theory and
               | process.
        
             | easton wrote:
             | Why don't they keep Chromium up to date like they do with
             | Firefox? Ubuntu (to my knowledge) exempts browsers from
             | their LTS policy because of security fixes being bundled
             | with feature updates.
        
         | vadfa wrote:
         | >Did you know that when you use Chromium on an up-to-date
         | Debian stable, it has over 100 unpatched security holes?
         | 
         | What do you expect when you use Debian stable? Precisely people
         | choose Debian stable because it gets no updates. (I'm only half
         | kidding)
        
           | Mrnothing_ wrote:
           | Thats why Firefox have lts realices
        
         | foxpurple wrote:
         | X11 screen lockers are not secure at all if you can get them to
         | crash in any way, they revert to showing the full desktop
         | unprotected.
        
           | calvinmorrison wrote:
           | fwiw TDE implements SAK. Don't know about anyone else.
        
           | kevincox wrote:
           | This isn't quite true. There are some X11 screen lockers
           | (maybe only GNOME?) that coordinate with the login manager so
           | that a crash just leads to a restarted login manager.
           | 
           | ...but yes, most X11 screen lockers have this flaw.
        
         | smoldesu wrote:
         | I'm not surprised that Linux Mint has egregious security
         | issues, the developers are paid nothing to make it and there's
         | basically no corporate incentive to secure it. On the other
         | hand, Apple and Google have quite literally _trillions_ of
         | dollars at their disposal. Their security teams ought to be the
         | largest and most advanced in the world, but they aren 't.
         | They're criminally understaffed and have their hands tied by
         | upper management when it comes to accepting help from third-
         | parties like Corellium _who actually know what they 're doing_.
         | Instead, everyone shuts each other out to pretend like they
         | know what they're doing, only to get clowned on when some
         | 13-year-old takes down their homepage with SQL injection.
         | 
         | I'm tired of pretending like security is anything other than
         | theater and optics at this point. You either accept humility
         | and design transparent software, or embrace complexity and let
         | the machine consume you. The business of building software has
         | started shifting to the latter paradigm, and now they're paying
         | the price for it. If we're lucky, we might see a reprieve of
         | the late-80s within the decade, where the internet is saturated
         | with buggy and proprietary servers ripe for the hacking.
        
           | JonathanBeuys wrote:
           | the developers are paid         nothing to make it
           | 
           | Isn't Mint the second most used Linux distro or so? Shouldn't
           | selling the default search engine alone bring in a boatload
           | of money?
           | 
           | On their blog they say:                   Search engines who
           | do not share the         income generated by our users, are
           | removed from Linux Mint and might         get their ads
           | blocked.
           | 
           | https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=1851
        
         | edoceo wrote:
         | Debian can't be held responsible for flaws in Chromium can
         | they? Wouldn't those same issues exist on all distros with the
         | same version of Chromium? Doesn't the distro just package what
         | they can as best they can?
        
           | JonathanBeuys wrote:
           | I am confused about your question. Can you elaborate? Distros
           | usually provide patches for known security holes in their
           | repos. Why would one not hold them responsible to do so?
        
             | edoceo wrote:
             | How could Debian be the security gate for literally 1000s
             | of packages?
             | 
             | Chromium is a huge beast of code, should Debian maintainers
             | be debugging and coding patches to various packages?
             | 
             | I think we can't expect the distro to fix the security
             | issues in everything. It's upstream responsibility to
             | handle their own CVE.
        
               | JonathanBeuys wrote:
               | Upstream has done that already. Google patched those bugs
               | months ago.
        
               | edoceo wrote:
               | Are we helping Debian get those processed into Bullseye?
               | Or we just barking ideals? We all know FOSS is under
               | staffed and under funded.
               | 
               | Perhaps Google should have one FTE for each major distro
               | to help keep that beast of a codebase up to the standard
               | these threads seem to expect.
               | 
               | It's a heavy burden to place on Debian - and I don't
               | think it's fair to expect them to have eg Chromium and
               | the 10-hundred other packages perfect.
               | 
               | Debian is fscking awesome, they are doing amazing work.
               | Hip Hip Hooray!!
        
               | fiddlerwoaroof wrote:
               | The whole maintainer model exists in Debian because
               | Debian tries to do its own maintenance on packages, even
               | if the original developers are unwilling to accept the
               | fix back.
               | 
               | Chromium and Firefox are sort of monster code bases,
               | though, it's not surprising to me that distros are
               | reluctant to change it in key ways.
        
             | hakre wrote:
             | No, software developers and package maintainers do. A
             | distro is where it goes all together and normally under a
             | license.
             | 
             | Even licenses are different across packages in a repo, they
             | normally all have a pretty clear wording how much you can
             | hold responsible them for that (hint: no warranty, no
             | fitness for a particular purpose).
             | 
             | Read it before use and think first, e.g. how that software
             | comes to life and is managed / maintained. Debian =/=
             | Apple.
        
               | JonathanBeuys wrote:
               | The software developer (Google) patched those bugs months
               | ago.
               | 
               | Not sure what that has to do with licenses.
        
         | mwcremer wrote:
         | > Any suggestions which distro takes security serious?
         | 
         | OpenBSD.
        
           | ncmncm wrote:
           | On the "base install". OpenBSD's attitude is, if you install
           | insecure 3rd party code, it's on you.
           | 
           | QubesOS, based on Xen hypervisor, provides compartmented
           | security: a hole in an app need not provide access to
           | anything else. You have multiple mostly long-running VMs for
           | different roles. Hardware access is managed in VMs that do
           | not run app code. 16GB RAM is just barely enough, and apps
           | get no access to a GPU. But it's solid and mature. The 4.1
           | release, due someday, has had a lot of UX attention.
           | 
           | SpectrumOS is an an attempt at lighter-weight security. Based
           | on NixOS, apps run in a minimal, temporary VM spun up just
           | for the app, sub-second, for experience more like Docker than
           | Virtualbox. Still very much under development. Donate to
           | Alyssa Ross on Github to accelerate dev work.
        
             | lokedhs wrote:
             | This is the best answer. Qubes OS is really the only
             | practical way to run Linux in a secure manner right now.
             | Its isolation features are not just useful for security, it
             | makes experimentation really easy as one of never has to
             | worry about messing up the installation.
             | 
             | Spectrum may be an option in the future, and I really hope
             | it succeeds.
        
               | messe wrote:
               | Fedora Silverblue is becoming interesting as well,
               | especially with "Toolbox" a tool that lets you quickly
               | spin up relatively isolated containers as long-lived
               | development environments, separated from the main OS-
               | installation.
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | rado wrote:
       | > Apple is shipping iOS with known bugs
       | 
       | Shocker
        
         | xchaotic wrote:
         | it's working fine for the bottom line and stock price so why
         | should they care more?
        
         | shreddit wrote:
         | This is not about bugs, there will always be bugs. These are
         | security HOLES.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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