From: pageexec@freemail.hu
To: "Rafael C. de Almeida" <almeidaraf@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:59:10 +0200
MIME-Version: 1.0
Subject: Re: [stable] Linux 2.6.25.10
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CC: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>,
       Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       stable@kernel.org
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On 17 Jul 2008 at 4:19, Rafael C. de Almeida wrote:

> pageexec@freemail.hu wrote:
> > in other words, you should not be worrying about people not learning about
> > all security fixes, they already know it's not possible to provide such
> > information. however sharing your knowledge that you do have will *help*
> > them because 1. they can know for sure it's something important to apply
> > (no need to use their limited human resources to make that judgement),
> > 2. they can spend more of their resources on analyzing the *other* unmarked
> > fixes. overall this can only improve everyone's security.
> 
> Hey, I have a crazy idea! What if they just mark all the bugs as a
> security bug (after all they all kinda are for some definition of
> security anyway)? That way people just apply all the patches and do not
> have to analyze anything, therefore not wasting their limited human
> resources at all!
> 
> Linus' point is exactly that they shouldn't be treated differently,

yet they already are, see below.

> so you shouldn't allocate human resources to other bugs and just apply the
> security ones. If you want to convince someone you must tell us *why*
> those so-called security bugs are more important.

look at what went into 2.6.25.11 for example. it's a security fix. you do
treat them differently: you include them in -stable to the exclusion of
many other 'less important' fixes. read Documentation/stable_kernel_rules.txt
for how you not treat all fixes as equal (it's not only security ones that
are special cased).

> Also, you need to tell
> us what you consider to be a security bug. That's not clear to me at least.

anything that breaks the kernel's security model. privilege elevation
always does.

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