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Libxml2's "no security embargoes" policy

(lwn.net)
277 points jwilk | 3 comments | 25 Jun 25 19:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.475s | source
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arp242 ◴[25 Jun 25 22:06 UTC] No.44382233[source]▶
A lot of these "security bugs" are not really "security bugs" in the first place. Denial of service is not resulting in people's bank accounts being emptied or nude selfies being spread all over the internet.

Things like "panics on certain content" like [1] or [2] are "security bugs" now. By that standard anything that fixes a potential panic is a "security bug". I've probably fixed hundreds if not thousands of "security bugs" in my career by that standard.

Barely qualifies as a "security bug" yet it's rated as "6.2 Moderate" and "7.5 HIGH". To say nothing of gazillion "high severity" "regular expression DoS" nonsense and whatnot.

And the worst part is all of this makes it so much harder to find actual high-severity issues. It's not harmless spam.

[1]: https://github.com/gomarkdown/markdown/security/advisories/G...

[2]: https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2024-0373.html

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1. cedws ◴[26 Jun 25 09:06 UTC] No.44385556[source]▶
Denial of service is a security bug. It may seem innocuous in the context of a single library, but what happens when that library finds it way into core banking systems, energy infrastructure and so on? It's a target ripe for exploitation by foreign adversaries. It has the same potential to harm people as other bugs.
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2. sigilis ◴[26 Jun 25 10:14 UTC] No.44385906[source]▶
The importance of the system in question is not a factor in whether something is a security bug for a dependency. The threat model of the important system should preclude it from using dependencies that are not developed with a similar security paradigm. Libxml2 simplly operates under a different regime than, as an arbitrary example, the nuclear infrastructure of a country.

The library isn't a worm, it does not find its way into anything. If the bank cares about security they will write their own, use a library that has been audited for such issues, sponsor the development, or use the software provided as is.

You may rejoin with the fact that it could find its way into a project as a dependency of something else. The same arguments apply at any level.

If those systems crash because they balanced their entire business on code written by randos who contribute to an open source project then the organizations in question will have to deal with the consequences. If they want better, they can do what everyone is entitled to: they can contribute to, make, or pay for something better.

3. arp242 ◴[26 Jun 25 10:56 UTC] No.44386120[source]▶
By that standard almost any bug could be considered a "security bug", including things like "returns error even though my XML is valid" or "it parses this data wrong".