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Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel

576 points · 408 comments · luispa

john_strinlai · 1790902914 · focus · HN ↗
note that _any_ bugfix is assigned a cve, which makes for big numbers.
>“Due to the layer at which the Linux kernel is in a system, almost any bug might be exploitable to compromise the security of the kernel… Because of this, the CVE assignment team is overly cautious and assign CVE numbers to any bugfix that they identify.”
<a href="https://docs.kernel.org/process/cve.html" rel="nofollow">https://docs.kernel.org/process/cve.html
"number of cves" is a useless metric, especially when it comes to the kernel.
1. SAI_Peregrinus · 1790903533 · focus · HN ↗
  Tautologically every bug can legitimately be assigned a CVE, since every bug prevents some feature from working as intended. It's therefore a denial of service, which by the definition of the CVE system using CVSS means every bug is at least a 1/Low level vulnerability to CVSS v4.0.
  If you're willing to stretch, missing but planned features also deny the use of said features since they haven't been added yet, and so are CVSS 1/Low vulnerabilities.
  Resume-driven development for security researchers has never been easier!
  1. jeroenhd · 1790922696 · focus · HN ↗
    Loads of bugs aren't CVE-worthy. If you tell the computer to make a light green but it makes the light red, that's a bug but no DoS or other CVE-worthy bug.
    However, the Linux kernel is supposed to run any userland program without crashing, so anything that crashes the kernel is a local DoS and there are a lot of them. It's also supposed to shield processes from each other and maintain privilege levels correctly, so many incorrect memory leaks are also CVE worthy. Whether a CVE applies depends on the people and programs using the kernel, and the kernel team can't read your code to tell you if it applies or not.
    People reading CVEs wrong ("it's got a high number so we must patch within a day") must be going crazy over this, but the point of CVEs is to let you make judgement calls, not to be a cool statistic about how secure something is.
    Most CVEs are irrelevant to most people, that's always been the case.
    Sesse__ · 1790940574 · focus · HN ↗
    > but the point of CVEs is to let you make judgement calls
    Realistically, most admins cannot make judgment calls about 1000+ CVEs for a kernel release.
    jurgenburgen · 1790943466 · focus · HN ↗
    Usually the security team mandates a zero CVE policy on all deployments and the organization complies.
    lstodd · 1790950612 · focus · HN ↗
    we in security teams can only dream of such incompetent management
    zero CVE policy = halt on business development.
    dormento · 1790944226 · focus · HN ↗
    And not only that, remember the hn crowd is not at all representative of the average.
    Even more realistically, many admins do not have the background to be able to reason (by themselves) about the actual risk of most CVEs, so just going along with specialized media coverage is often a sound strategy.
    wang_li · 1790957857 · focus · HN ↗
    >And not only that, remember the hn crowd is not at all representative of the average.
    We should keep our hopes up, someday we may get there.

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