[Full-disclosure] The story of the Linux kernel 3.x...

[valdis.kletnieks at vt.edu]

On Wed, 16 May 2012 23:49:40 +0200, Adam Zabrocki said:

> so the latest update has this fix but still official ISO has old kernel. Fix was applied
> in March/April. So again _sock kernels_ have/had so simple mistake ;)

You're assuming it's a *mistake* rather than something intentional.

Remember that the distro does *not* know what you run on the kernel, so they
need to build one that covers all the bases.  So they really need to make a
choice.  Which is going to result in more nasty phone calls and e-mails:
leaving COMPAT_VDSO set (which is probably the 12,934th most security crucial
security setting in a distro), or turn it off and *know* this will break
certain older binaries?

Remember that if you're a distro with a million users, even if only 0.1% of
them still have old binaries, you just borked 1,000 user's machines.  Now
compare that number to the number that will get hacked if you leave COMPAT_VDSO
on (remember that the *only* thing it stops is exploits that hard-code certain
addresses)



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