Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:39:26 -0500 From: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org> To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FLAME - security advisories on the 23rd ? uncool idea is uncool Message-ID: <201112231139.26613.jhb@freebsd.org> In-Reply-To: <4EF4A75C.2040609@my.gd> References: <4EF4A75C.2040609@my.gd>
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On Friday, December 23, 2011 11:07:56 am Damien Fleuriot wrote: > Hey up list, >=20 >=20 >=20 > Look, just a rant here. >=20 >=20 > Who in *HELL* thought it would be a cool idea to release no less than > FOUR security advisories today ? >=20 > I mean, couldn't this have waited and remained undisclosed until monday ? >=20 > I for one do *NOT* relish the idea of updating 50+ boxes this evening > and tomorrow ! >=20 >=20 > Not to mention a whole lot of merchants and banks have toggled IT Freeze > a few weeks ago, to ensure xmas shopping doesn't get disturbed by > production changes. >=20 >=20 > Seriously, this is just irritating. =46rom an e-mail sent to security@ from the security officer: <quote> Hi all, No, the Grinch didn't steal the FreeBSD security officer GPG key, and your = eyes aren't deceiving you: We really did just send out 5 security advisories. The timing, to put it bluntly, sucks. We normally aim to release advisorie= s on Wednesdays in order to maximize the number of system administrators who wil= l be at work already; and we try very hard to avoid issuing advisories any time = close to holidays for the same reason. The start of the Christmas weekend -- in = some parts of the world it's already Saturday -- is absolutely not when we want = to be releasing security advisories. Unfortunately my hand was forced: One of the issues (FreeBSD-SA-11:08.telne= td) is a remote root vulnerability which is being actively exploited in the wil= d; bugs really don't come any worse than this. On the positive side, most peo= ple have moved past telnet and on to SSH by now; but this is still not an issue= we could postpone until a more convenient time. While I'm writing, a note to freebsd-update users: FreeBSD-SA-11:07.chroot = has a rather messy fix involving adding a new interface to libc; this has the awk= ward side effect of causing the sizes of some "symbols" (aka. functions) in libc= to change, resulting in cascading changes into many binaries. The long list of updated files is irritating, but isn't a sign that anything in freebsd-upda= te went wrong. </quote> =2D-=20 John Baldwin
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