From: Martin Uecker <muecker@gwdg.de>
To: Michael Matz <matz@suse.de>
Cc: Ian Lance Taylor <iant@golang.org>,
Paul Koning <paulkoning@comcast.net>,
Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu>,
"Sandra Loosemore" <sloosemore@baylibre.com>,
Mark Wielaard <mark@klomp.org>, <overseers@sourceware.org>,
<gcc@gcc.gnu.org>, <binutils@sourceware.org>,
<gdb@sourceware.org>, <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>
Subject: Re: Sourceware mitigating and preventing the next xz-backdoor
Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2024 16:32:15 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <c805cf36a25821223d5bda6c8bb84f7d536019de.camel@gwdg.de> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <8e877d2f-01e0-c786-dea5-265edbdc0c07@suse.de>
Am Mittwoch, dem 03.04.2024 um 16:00 +0200 schrieb Michael Matz:
> Hello,
>
> On Wed, 3 Apr 2024, Martin Uecker via Gcc wrote:
>
> > > > Seems reasonable, but note that it wouldn't make any difference to
> > > > this attack. The liblzma library was modified to corrupt the sshd
> > > > binary, when sshd was linked against liblzma. The actual attack
> > > > occurred via a connection to a corrupt sshd. If sshd was running as
> > > > root, as is normal, the attacker had root access to the machine. None
> > > > of the attacking steps had anything to do with having root access
> > > > while building or installing the program.
> >
> > There does not seem a single good solution against something like this.
> >
> > My take a way is that software needs to become less complex. Do
> > we really still need complex build systems such as autoconf?
>
> Do we really need complex languages like C++ to write our software in?
> SCNR :)
Probably not.
> Complexity lies in the eye of the beholder, but to be honest in
> the software that we're dealing with here, the build system or autoconf
> does _not_ come to mind first when thinking about complexity.
The backdoor was hidden in a complicated autoconf script...
>
> (And, FWIW, testing for features isn't "complex". And have you looked at
> other build systems? I have, and none of them are less complex, just
> opaque in different ways from make+autotools).
I ask a very specific question: To what extend is testing
for features instead of semantic versions and/or supported
standards still necessary? This seems like a problematic approach
that may have been necessary decades ago, but it seems it may be
time to move on.
Martin
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2024-04-03 14:33 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 56+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2024-03-29 20:39 Security warning about xz library compromise Mark Wielaard
2024-04-01 15:06 ` Sourceware mitigating and preventing the next xz-backdoor Mark Wielaard
2024-04-02 19:54 ` Sandra Loosemore
2024-04-02 20:03 ` Paul Eggert
2024-04-02 20:20 ` Paul Koning
2024-04-02 20:28 ` Ian Lance Taylor
2024-04-03 6:26 ` Martin Uecker
2024-04-03 14:00 ` Michael Matz
2024-04-03 14:14 ` Paul Koning
2024-04-03 14:32 ` Martin Uecker [this message]
2024-04-03 14:46 ` Jeffrey Walton
2024-04-03 16:02 ` Michael Matz
2024-04-03 16:26 ` Joel Sherrill
2024-04-03 16:32 ` Martin Uecker
2024-04-03 16:51 ` Andreas Schwab
2024-04-03 16:56 ` Jonathan Wakely
2024-04-03 18:46 ` Jonathon Anderson
2024-04-03 19:01 ` Martin Uecker
2024-04-05 21:15 ` Andrew Sutton
2024-04-06 13:00 ` Richard Biener
2024-04-06 15:59 ` Martin Uecker
2024-04-04 13:59 ` Michael Matz
2024-04-09 16:44 ` anderson.jonathonm
2024-04-09 17:57 ` Andreas Schwab
2024-04-09 19:59 ` Jonathon Anderson
2024-04-09 20:11 ` Paul Koning
2024-04-09 21:40 ` Jeffrey Walton
2024-04-09 21:50 ` Paul Eggert
2024-04-09 21:58 ` Sam James
2024-04-09 22:15 ` Paul Eggert
2024-04-09 22:22 ` Sam James
2024-04-09 22:53 ` Paul Eggert
2024-04-09 22:03 ` Jonathon Anderson
2024-04-09 22:10 ` Sam James
2024-04-09 21:54 ` Jonathon Anderson
2024-04-09 22:00 ` Sam James
2024-04-10 14:09 ` Frank Ch. Eigler
2024-04-10 18:47 ` Jonathon Anderson
2024-04-10 19:00 ` Frank Ch. Eigler
2024-04-10 10:26 ` Claudio Bantaloukas
2024-04-02 22:08 ` Guinevere Larsen
2024-04-02 22:50 ` Jeffrey Walton
2024-04-02 23:20 ` Mark Wielaard
2024-04-02 23:34 ` Paul Koning
2024-04-03 0:37 ` Jeffrey Walton
2024-04-03 8:08 ` Florian Weimer
2024-04-03 13:53 ` Joel Sherrill
2024-04-04 10:25 ` Mark Wielaard
2024-04-10 16:30 ` Alejandro Colomar
2024-04-21 15:30 ` Mark Wielaard
2024-04-21 20:40 ` Alejandro Colomar
2024-04-21 20:52 ` Alejandro Colomar
2024-04-30 11:28 ` Alejandro Colomar
2024-04-03 14:04 ` Tom Tromey
2024-04-03 14:42 ` Jeff Law
2024-04-04 10:48 ` Mark Wielaard
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