Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-21 Thread Gaurish Sharma
On Wednesday 17 Mar 2010 8:09:47 am Nilesh Govindarajan wrote:
 I would love to jump into pacman-dev team. But I don't know C or C++
 whatever pacman is written in. :( :( :(
 I can contribute in PHP.
Hi,
Please  help in AUR, there is lot of work needed to be done.
http://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?project=2
-- 
Regards,
Gaurish Sharma
www.gaurishsharma.com


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-21 Thread Nilesh Govindarajan

On 03/21/2010 08:47 PM, Gaurish Sharma wrote:

On Wednesday 17 Mar 2010 8:09:47 am Nilesh Govindarajan wrote:

I would love to jump into pacman-dev team. But I don't know C or C++
whatever pacman is written in. :( :( :(
I can contribute in PHP.

Hi,
Please  help in AUR, there is lot of work needed to be done.
http://bugs.archlinux.org/index.php?project=2


Yeah, I'll look into it after my exams (25 March 2010).

--
Nilesh Govindarajan
Site  Server Administrator
www.itech7.com


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Chris Allison
I would have thought that this only makes sense in the context of a
point-in-time release. i.e. you have a server which isn't updated as
regularly as your desktop.  The onus then is on the user to ensure
that the versions of packages they are using are safe.

I don't see this as a problem with the rolling release system that Arch uses.

Where it does make sense is if a publicly available, LTS type server
repository is used.  Then it would be up to the maintainer of the repo
to keep on top of security fixes.

regards

Chris



-- 
Calling the unnamed register the unnamed register really does nothing
but negate the name the unnamed register and render the unnamed
register useless as a name, thus the unnamed register is named the
unnamed register and is no longer the unnamed register as it is named
the unnamed register, so where is the unnamed register to be found and
what do we call it!
Steve Oualline, The book of vim.


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Nilesh Govindarajan

On 03/16/2010 06:53 PM, Chris Allison wrote:

I would have thought that this only makes sense in the context of a
point-in-time release. i.e. you have a server which isn't updated as
regularly as your desktop.  The onus then is on the user to ensure
that the versions of packages they are using are safe.

I don't see this as a problem with the rolling release system that Arch uses.

Where it does make sense is if a publicly available, LTS type server
repository is used.  Then it would be up to the maintainer of the repo
to keep on top of security fixes.

regards

Chris





Actually speaking, Arch is ideal for a server. With proper customization 
abilities and up-to-date software, your server is less likely to get 
compromised (unless improperly configured) in contrary to those of 
CentOS, RHEL  (yeah it is less than) Fedora, Ubuntu, etc. which keep 
very old packages.


--
Nilesh Govindarajan
Site  Server Adminstrator
www.itech7.com


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Jared Casper
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Aaron Griffin aaronmgrif...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com 
 wrote:
 I don't think we need any security team for Arch. New packages are
 released within a week of their updates. GPG signing and md5sum
 verification is a must though.

 md5sum verification has ALWAYS been done


In a security context, verification of files installed by a package
_after installation_ would be nice.  i.e. pacman --verify
/usr/sbin/sshd would tell me if the md5sum (or sha1sum, etc) of my
/usr/sbin/sshd matches that of the official package.

Jared


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Nilesh Govindarajan
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Jared Casper jaredcas...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Aaron Griffin aaronmgrif...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com 
 wrote:
 I don't think we need any security team for Arch. New packages are
 released within a week of their updates. GPG signing and md5sum
 verification is a must though.

 md5sum verification has ALWAYS been done


 In a security context, verification of files installed by a package
 _after installation_ would be nice.  i.e. pacman --verify
 /usr/sbin/sshd would tell me if the md5sum (or sha1sum, etc) of my
 /usr/sbin/sshd matches that of the official package.

 Jared


Let this thread not be just another Will be nice one. Pacman devs,
please start implementing these package verification things.

-- 
Nilesh Govindarajan
Site  Server Administrator
www.itech7.com


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Daenyth Blank
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 13:24, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote:
 Let this thread not be just another Will be nice one. Pacman devs,
 please start implementing these package verification things.
And you're paying them how much that allows you to tell them what to
work on? Seriously, patches welcome.


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Pierre Schmitz
Am Dienstag, 16. März 2010 18:24:46 schrieb Nilesh Govindarajan:
 Let this thread not be just another Will be nice one. Pacman devs,
 please start implementing these package verification things.

You got it wrong. Nothing will change until you start working on this. I have 
seen those discussions during the last 6 years and none of them ever lead into 
a working implementation.

-- 

Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Ray Kohler
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Jared Casper jaredcas...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Aaron Griffin aaronmgrif...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com 
 wrote:
 I don't think we need any security team for Arch. New packages are
 released within a week of their updates. GPG signing and md5sum
 verification is a must though.

 md5sum verification has ALWAYS been done


 In a security context, verification of files installed by a package
 _after installation_ would be nice.  i.e. pacman --verify
 /usr/sbin/sshd would tell me if the md5sum (or sha1sum, etc) of my
 /usr/sbin/sshd matches that of the official package.

 Jared


 Let this thread not be just another Will be nice one. Pacman devs,
 please start implementing these package verification things.

Users who want these things, please start joining the pacman dev team.


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Aaron Griffin
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Jared Casper jaredcas...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Aaron Griffin aaronmgrif...@gmail.com 
 wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com 
 wrote:
 I don't think we need any security team for Arch. New packages are
 released within a week of their updates. GPG signing and md5sum
 verification is a must though.

 md5sum verification has ALWAYS been done


 In a security context, verification of files installed by a package
 _after installation_ would be nice.  i.e. pacman --verify
 /usr/sbin/sshd would tell me if the md5sum (or sha1sum, etc) of my
 /usr/sbin/sshd matches that of the official package.

Is this a feature request in the bug tracker? Please add it if you
want this functionality. That's the only way it will ever happen


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Ionut Biru

On 03/16/2010 07:24 PM, Nilesh Govindarajan wrote:

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:48 PM, Jared Casperjaredcas...@gmail.com  wrote:

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 8:49 AM, Aaron Griffinaaronmgrif...@gmail.com  wrote:

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:32 AM, Nilesh Govindarajanli...@itech7.com  wrote:

I don't think we need any security team for Arch. New packages are
released within a week of their updates. GPG signing and md5sum
verification is a must though.


md5sum verification has ALWAYS been done



In a security context, verification of files installed by a package
_after installation_ would be nice.  i.e. pacman --verify
/usr/sbin/sshd would tell me if the md5sum (or sha1sum, etc) of my
/usr/sbin/sshd matches that of the official package.

Jared



Let this thread not be just another Will be nice one. Pacman devs,
please start implementing these package verification things.



sudo make me a sandwich.

--
Ionut


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Aaron Griffin
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:34 PM, Daenyth Blank daenyth+a...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 13:24, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote:
 Let this thread not be just another Will be nice one. Pacman devs,
 please start implementing these package verification things.
 And you're paying them how much that allows you to tell them what to
 work on? Seriously, patches welcome.

Also... don't assume they read the mailing list. Post the feature
request on the bug tracker. This is apparently the hardest concept for
all these types of threads. Someone - go post it now and paste the
link in this thread


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Jared Casper
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:30 AM, Aaron Griffin aaronmgrif...@gmail.com wrote:
 Is this a feature request in the bug tracker? Please add it if you
 want this functionality. That's the only way it will ever happen


It's been there for years: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/11091

I just wanted to point out that the md5sum verification spoken of
generally means something different in a security context than what is
already being done.

Jared


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Denis Kobozev
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 5:43 PM, Ananda Samaddar ana...@samaddar.co.uk
 Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team?  I feel
 strongly enough about it that if something can't be done then I'm
 switching to another distro. Despite the fact that I really like Arch,
 it's one deficiency is a pretty glaring one in my opinion.  I hope this
 doesn't turn into a flamefest and my opinions are by no means meant to
 be a slight on the Arch devs or community.

I'm going to chime in and repeat what some of the others have said - I
too would like to see some evidence that Arch as a distro has security
issues other that those that should be fixed upstream. Since Arch
always has the latest versions of software, it should automatically
have all the latest security fixes - there's no need to backport
patches to old versions of software, like Debian does.

Security issues arising from poor default config files should be and
are addressed by individual package maintainers. Again, I'm not aware
of any cases where a maintainer's poor job resulted in a security
issue - probably because each package is a vanilla package and doesn't
contain any customized configs (again, Debian comes to mind).

Best,
Denis.


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Nilesh Govindarajan
I would love to jump into pacman-dev team. But I don't know C or C++
whatever pacman is written in. :( :( :(
I can contribute in PHP.

-- 
Nilesh Govindarajan
Site  Server Administrator
www.itech7.com


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-16 Thread Ray Kohler
On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 10:39 PM, Nilesh Govindarajan li...@itech7.com wrote:
 I would love to jump into pacman-dev team. But I don't know C or C++
 whatever pacman is written in. :( :( :(
 I can contribute in PHP.

You might then want to look into helping out the devs of the AUR
webapp, if you care about it. They have an aur-dev mailing list, and
their code is at http://projects.archlinux.org/aur.git/ . (But I think
this is off-topic to this thread.)


[arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Ananda Samaddar
Further to my previous email a while back I've started work on some
proposals that I'd like to pitch to the Arch community and the powers
that be.  They aren't finished yet but should be soon.  The thing is
I'm not really aware of the 'chain of command' in Arch.  Aaron Griffin,
are you the 'benevolent dictator' and do you have the final say?

The reason I'm asking is I want to know to whom I address my proposals
when they are finished.  For example I'll probably be proposing some
admin changes, nothing too sweeping but just some things that could be
done to implement better security in Arch.

For the mean time I've created the IRC channel #archlinux-security on
Freenode.  Anyone is free to hang out there to discuss security in Arch
and how we (emphasis on the we, i.e. the community) can make things
better.  My IRC nick is psychedelicious, I was previously using a
different nick based on a Funkadelic album released in 1971.  I won't
be on there 24x7 but will be online as much as possible.  I'd
particularly like to see people on that channel interesting in
volunteering to create a Security Response Team for our distro!

Also I'm aware I've posted under several different email addresses.
After toying with several free providers I decided to stop being a
cheapskate and get my own domain so this is my canonical email address
now.

regards,

Ananda Samaddar


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Pierre Schmitz
Am Montag, 15. März 2010 20:54:03 schrieb Ananda Samaddar:
 The reason I'm asking is I want to know to whom I address my proposals
 when they are finished.

Simple: File a bug report or feature request at bugs.archlinux.org. No idea 
what your proposals are about but you should make sure they only address a 
single concrete issue.

Pierre

-- 

Pierre Schmitz, https://users.archlinux.de/~pierre


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Aaron Griffin
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Pierre Schmitz pie...@archlinux.de wrote:
 Am Montag, 15. März 2010 20:54:03 schrieb Ananda Samaddar:
 The reason I'm asking is I want to know to whom I address my proposals
 when they are finished.

 Simple: File a bug report or feature request at bugs.archlinux.org. No idea
 what your proposals are about but you should make sure they only address a
 single concrete issue.

Agreed. Send them through the bug tracker so the relevant people can be notified


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Allan McRae

On 16/03/10 06:37, Aaron Griffin wrote:

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Pierre Schmitzpie...@archlinux.de  wrote:

Am Montag, 15. März 2010 20:54:03 schrieb Ananda Samaddar:

The reason I'm asking is I want to know to whom I address my proposals
when they are finished.


Simple: File a bug report or feature request at bugs.archlinux.org. No idea
what your proposals are about but you should make sure they only address a
single concrete issue.


Agreed. Send them through the bug tracker so the relevant people can be notified



As an aside, I would like to see some numbers on where we could improve 
in this area.  I have been following the CVE announcements and several 
other distros security releases for the past few months and from what I 
see, I believe Arch is mostly ahead of the game.  Following the latest 
upstream releases has its advantages.


Allan




Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Ananda Samaddar
On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:29:45 +1000
Allan McRae al...@archlinux.org wrote:
 
 As an aside, I would like to see some numbers on where we could
 improve in this area.  I have been following the CVE announcements
 and several other distros security releases for the past few months
 and from what I see, I believe Arch is mostly ahead of the game.
 Following the latest upstream releases has its advantages.
 
 Allan
 

This may be true in the sense that by using the latest packages we are
incorporating security fixes as they are released by default.  I take
issue with the fact that there's no dedicated team and nothing in place
to deal with security alerts.  The other issue being the lack of signed
packages.  I don't know how much of a problem this is for other Arch
users.  

Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team?  I feel
strongly enough about it that if something can't be done then I'm
switching to another distro. Despite the fact that I really like Arch,
it's one deficiency is a pretty glaring one in my opinion.  I hope this
doesn't turn into a flamefest and my opinions are by no means meant to
be a slight on the Arch devs or community.

Ananda


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Daenyth Blank
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 17:43, Ananda Samaddar ana...@samaddar.co.uk wrote:
 Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team?

This has been proposed multiple times, but oddly enough no one who has
proposed it has ever taken any steps to make it happen...


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Gaurish Sharma
On Tuesday 16 Mar 2010 2:59:45 am Allan McRae wrote:


 
 As an aside, I would like to see some numbers on where we could improve
 in this area.  I have been following the CVE announcements and several
 other distros security releases for the past few months and from what I
 see, I believe Arch is mostly ahead of the game.  Following the latest
 upstream releases has its advantages.
 
 Allan
Hi Allan,
The major thing we are missing on is: Package signing 
It there is a need to catch up with other distros on this.
Package signing is extremely important to ensure that nobody can tamper the 
packages. similarly should be way to  package's integrity

-- 
Regards,
Gaurish Sharma
www.gaurishsharma.com


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Thayer Williams
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Ananda Samaddar ana...@samaddar.co.uk wrote:
 Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team?  I feel
 strongly enough about it that if something can't be done then I'm
 switching to another distro. Despite the fact that I really like Arch,
 it's one deficiency is a pretty glaring one in my opinion.  I hope this
 doesn't turn into a flamefest and my opinions are by no means meant to
 be a slight on the Arch devs or community.

No offence taken and FWIW a lot of people switch distros because of
one or two fundamental needs that aren't meant.  This wouldn't be any
different.

Look forward to hearing what you have to say...


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Thayer Williams
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:56 PM, Thayer Williams thay...@gmail.com wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Ananda Samaddar ana...@samaddar.co.uk 
 wrote:
 Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team?  I feel
 strongly enough about it that if something can't be done then I'm
 switching to another distro. Despite the fact that I really like Arch,
 it's one deficiency is a pretty glaring one in my opinion.  I hope this
 doesn't turn into a flamefest and my opinions are by no means meant to
 be a slight on the Arch devs or community.

 No offence taken and FWIW a lot of people switch distros because of
 one or two fundamental needs that aren't meant.  This wouldn't be any
 different.

...because of one or two fundamental needs that aren't MET; not meant.
 Carry on =)


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Allan McRae

On 16/03/10 07:43, Ananda Samaddar wrote:

On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 07:29:45 +1000
Allan McRaeal...@archlinux.org  wrote:


As an aside, I would like to see some numbers on where we could
improve in this area.  I have been following the CVE announcements
and several other distros security releases for the past few months
and from what I see, I believe Arch is mostly ahead of the game.
Following the latest upstream releases has its advantages.

Allan



This may be true in the sense that by using the latest packages we are
incorporating security fixes as they are released by default.  I take
issue with the fact that there's no dedicated team and nothing in place
to deal with security alerts.


There is no dedicated team, but as I said, we appear to be mostly ahead 
of the game in this respect.  I would be interested to see how many 
packages suffer from security issues that we miss.



The other issue being the lack of signed packages.


Providing code is the way to fix this.  There is a good start that has 
been made and it mostly needs someone dedicated to finish it off.



I don't know how much of a problem this is for other Arch
users.

Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team?  I feel
strongly enough about it that if something can't be done then I'm
switching to another distro. Despite the fact that I really like Arch,
it's one deficiency is a pretty glaring one in my opinion.  I hope this
doesn't turn into a flamefest and my opinions are by no means meant to
be a slight on the Arch devs or community.


Sure there is enthusiasm for such a venture, at least judging by how 
many times this has been bought up in the past.  I think one or two of 
those times an actual project started up but then died.  So it appears 
enthusiasm yes, continual motivation no (at least up until now...).


And, this is a great candidate for a community project.  A group could 
monitor security issues and file bugs to get the devs to fix them. This 
is the way all Arch projects start and if they are useful, they may get 
taken on board and made official.


Allan


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Ananda Samaddar
On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:56:32 -0700
Thayer Williams thay...@gmail.com wrote:
 
 No offence taken and FWIW a lot of people switch distros because of
 one or two fundamental needs that aren't meant.  This wouldn't be any
 different.
 
 Look forward to hearing what you have to say...

I'd like to help get things moving before I give up on Arch.  It's too
good a distro not to.

I've been having a look at the Gentoo security policy here:

http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/vulnerability-policy.xml

It looks like a pretty good template we could adapt to our needs. The
document in that link is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution
licence.  It mirrors a lot of the things I was going to suggest too.

Ananda



Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Magnus Therning
On 15/03/10 21:43, Ananda Samaddar wrote:
[..]
 Would there be any enthusiasm for a dedicated security team?  I feel
 strongly enough about it that if something can't be done then I'm switching
 to another distro. Despite the fact that I really like Arch, it's one
 deficiency is a pretty glaring one in my opinion.  I hope this doesn't turn
 into a flamefest and my opinions are by no means meant to be a slight on the
 Arch devs or community.

What would a dedicated security team actually do?

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning(OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus@therning.org  Jabber: magnus@therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Magnus Therning
On 15/03/10 22:03, Ananda Samaddar wrote:
 On Mon, 15 Mar 2010 14:56:32 -0700
 Thayer Williams thay...@gmail.com wrote:

 No offence taken and FWIW a lot of people switch distros because of
 one or two fundamental needs that aren't meant.  This wouldn't be any
 different.

 Look forward to hearing what you have to say...
 
 I'd like to help get things moving before I give up on Arch.  It's too
 good a distro not to.
 
 I've been having a look at the Gentoo security policy here:
 
 http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/vulnerability-policy.xml
 
 It looks like a pretty good template we could adapt to our needs. The
 document in that link is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution
 licence.  It mirrors a lot of the things I was going to suggest too.

After a quick look at it I don't see much that would apply though.  Arch
doesn't have releases.  Arch follows upstream releases very closes (in some
cases even too closely ;-)

So, if there is no need for backporting to a set of packages that has been
blessed into a supported release, what is left to do for a dedicated security
team?

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning(OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus@therning.org  Jabber: magnus@therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Xavier Chantry
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Magnus Therning mag...@therning.org wrote:
 After a quick look at it I don't see much that would apply though.  Arch
 doesn't have releases.  Arch follows upstream releases very closes (in some
 cases even too closely ;-)

 So, if there is no need for backporting to a set of packages that has been
 blessed into a supported release, what is left to do for a dedicated security
 team?


1) what allan said :
A group could monitor security issues and file bugs to get the devs to
fix them.
2) resume and finish the gpg work for pacman  friends


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Magnus Therning
On 15/03/10 22:34, Xavier Chantry wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Magnus Therning mag...@therning.org wrote:
 After a quick look at it I don't see much that would apply though.  Arch
 doesn't have releases.  Arch follows upstream releases very closes (in some
 cases even too closely ;-)

 So, if there is no need for backporting to a set of packages that has been
 blessed into a supported release, what is left to do for a dedicated security
 team?

 
 1) what allan said :
 A group could monitor security issues and file bugs to get the devs to
 fix them.

Is there any evidence that this is actually needed?

My impression is that maintainers already are monitoring upstream releases.
When they are lagging, there are users who mark things out-of-date.  The
occasional non-maintainer upload doesn't seem to warrant a dedicated team.

 2) resume and finish the gpg work for pacman  friends

Sure, that is worth doing.  Is it really a task for a dedicated security team?
It sounds more like a one-time thing for a group of developers.

Please do note that I'm more than willing to be convinced.

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning(OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus@therning.org  Jabber: magnus@therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Allan McRae

On 16/03/10 08:42, Magnus Therning wrote:

On 15/03/10 22:34, Xavier Chantry wrote:

On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:18 PM, Magnus Therningmag...@therning.org  wrote:

After a quick look at it I don't see much that would apply though.  Arch
doesn't have releases.  Arch follows upstream releases very closes (in some
cases even too closely ;-)

So, if there is no need for backporting to a set of packages that has been
blessed into a supported release, what is left to do for a dedicated security
team?



1) what allan said :
A group could monitor security issues and file bugs to get the devs to
fix them.


Is there any evidence that this is actually needed?

My impression is that maintainers already are monitoring upstream releases.
When they are lagging, there are users who mark things out-of-date.  The
occasional non-maintainer upload doesn't seem to warrant a dedicated team.


A bump for something being out of date is quite different from a bump 
for something being out of date and has a security issues.


I also know that there are cases where the security issue fixes are not 
considered critical by upstream and so they are only patched in 
CVS/SVN/whatever.  These are obviously cases where the expliot is not 
practical at this time, so there is no rush to fix but we probably still 
should.


But again, I would like to see numbers for how much this is actually an 
issue.  Saying that, if the number is above zero (likely), a security 
team could do some good.


Allan


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Xavier Chantry
On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:42 PM, Magnus Therning mag...@therning.org wrote:

 1) what allan said :
 A group could monitor security issues and file bugs to get the devs to
 fix them.

 Is there any evidence that this is actually needed?


No, Allan asked for some numbers, and I am curious too.

 My impression is that maintainers already are monitoring upstream releases.
 When they are lagging, there are users who mark things out-of-date.  The
 occasional non-maintainer upload doesn't seem to warrant a dedicated team.

 2) resume and finish the gpg work for pacman  friends

 Sure, that is worth doing.  Is it really a task for a dedicated security team?
 It sounds more like a one-time thing for a group of developers.


This is also true.. more or less. It does not matter how the people
doing the work are called.
There is no one writing code, no one giving technical advices, no one testing.
There are only users asking for signed packages.


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Magnus Therning
On 15/03/10 23:03, Xavier Chantry wrote:
 On Mon, Mar 15, 2010 at 11:42 PM, Magnus Therning mag...@therning.org wrote:
[..]
 2) resume and finish the gpg work for pacman  friends

 Sure, that is worth doing.  Is it really a task for a dedicated security 
 team?
 It sounds more like a one-time thing for a group of developers.

 
 This is also true.. more or less. It does not matter how the people doing
 the work are called.
 There is no one writing code, no one giving technical advices, no one
 testing.  There are only users asking for signed packages.

I'd argue it *is* important what you call them.

In one case one would ask for some developer(s) to dedicate some time during a
limited period, while in the other one is asking for on-going commitment.

I think it's *crucial* to position the proposal correctly.  Getting a feature
implemented in pacman is likely to be easier than getting a group of people to
sign up for a task that never ends.  Though I'm not saying either will be
easy.

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning(OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus@therning.org  Jabber: magnus@therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus identi.ca|twitter: magthe



signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature


Re: [arch-general] Arch Linux security is still poor....

2010-03-15 Thread Nilesh Govindarajan
I don't think we need any security team for Arch. New packages are
released within a week of their updates. GPG signing and md5sum
verification is a must though.

-- 
Nilesh Govindarajan
Site  Server Administrator
www.itech7.com