[89521] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: SendGate: Sendmail Multiple Vulnerabilities (Race Condition
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Thu Mar 23 21:09:23 2006
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 21:08:54 -0500
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Gadi Evron <ge@linuxbox.org>
Cc: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.21.0603230341230.18573-100000@linuxbox.org>
Errors-To: owner-nanog@merit.edu
On Thu, 23 Mar 2006 03:41:52 -0600 (CST), Gadi Evron <ge@linuxbox.org>
wrote:
> It took Sendmail a mounth to fix this. A mounth.
>
> A mounth!
>
> With such Vendor Responsibility, perhaps it is indeed a Good Thing to go
> Full Disclosure. It seems like history is repeating itself and Full
> Disclosure is once again not only a choice, but necessary to make vendors
> become responsible.
>
Given the scope of the changes you describe -- you wrote "Sendmail.com's
patch is so big they may as well have re-released the whole program."
-- I can't get upset at taking a month to fix it. You're dealing with
asynchronous events, which are really hard to start with. I suspect
that they spent some time deciding how to fix it -- you don't appear
thrilled with their choice, but I don't know what other options they
considered -- and then actually tested the new code. Given how many of
our security problems are due to buggy and inadequately-tested code, I
suspect that taking a month was actually being quite responsible.
--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
