glfs/postlfs/security/vulnerabilities.xml
2024-01-19 22:39:35 +01:00

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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd" [
<!ENTITY % general-entities SYSTEM "../../general.ent">
%general-entities;
]>
<sect1 id="vulnerabilities" xreflabel="vulnerabilities">
<?dbhtml filename="vulnerabilities.html"?>
<title>Vulnerabilities</title>
<!-- section g : 'Others' in longindex.html -->
<indexterm zone="vulnerabilities">
<primary sortas="g-vulnerabilities">vulnerability links</primary>
</indexterm>
<sect2 role="package">
<title>About vulnerabilities</title>
<para>
All software has bugs. Sometimes, a bug can be exploited, for example to
allow users to gain enhanced privileges (perhaps gaining a root shell,
or simply accessing or deleting other user&apos;s files), or to allow a
remote site to crash an application (denial of service), or for theft of
data. These bugs are labelled as vulnerabilities.
</para>
<para>
The main place where vulnerabilities get logged is
<ulink url="https://cve.mitre.org">cve.mitre.org</ulink>. Unfortunately,
many vulnerability numbers (CVE-yyyy-nnnn) are initially only labelled
as "reserved" when distributions start issuing fixes. Also, some
vulnerabilities apply to particular combinations of
<command>configure</command> options, or only apply to old versions of
packages which have long since been updated in BLFS.
</para>
<para>
BLFS differs from distributions&mdash;there is no BLFS security team, and
the editors only become aware of vulnerabilities after they are public
knowledge. Sometimes, a package with a vulnerability will not be updated
in the book for a long time. Issues can be logged in the Trac system,
which might speed up resolution.
</para>
<para>
The normal way for BLFS to fix a vulnerability is, ideally, to update
the book to a new fixed release of the package. Sometimes that happens
even before the vulnerability is public knowledge, so there is no
guarantee that it will be shown as a vulnerability fix in the Changelog.
Alternatively, a <command>sed</command> command, or a patch taken from
a distribution, may be appropriate.
</para>
<para>
The bottom line is that you are responsible for your own security, and
for assessing the potential impact of any problems.
</para>
<para>
The editors now issue Security Advisories for packages in BLFS (and LFS),
which can be found at <ulink
url="https://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/advisories/">BLFS Security
Advisories</ulink>, and grade the severity according to what upstream
reports, or to what is shown at <ulink
url="https://nvd.nist.gov/">nvd.nist.gov</ulink> if that has details.
</para>
<para>
To keep track of what is being discovered, you may wish to follow the
security announcements of one or more distributions. For example, Debian
has <ulink url="https://www.debian.org/security">Debian security</ulink>.
Fedora's links on security are at <ulink
url="https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/category:Security">the Fedora wiki</ulink>.
Details of Gentoo linux security announcements are discussed at
<ulink url="https://security.gentoo.org">Gentoo security</ulink>.
Finally, the Slackware archives of security announcements are at
<ulink url="https://slackware.com/security">Slackware security</ulink>.
</para>
<para>
The most general English source is perhaps
<ulink url="https://seclists.org/fulldisclosure">the Full Disclosure
Mailing List</ulink>, but please read the comment on that page. If you
use other languages you may prefer other sites such as <ulink
url="https://www.heise.de/security">heise.de</ulink> (German) or <ulink
url="https://www.cert.hr">cert.hr</ulink> (Croatian). These are not
linux-specific. There is also a daily update at lwn.net for subscribers
(free access to the data after 2 weeks, but their vulnerabilities
database at <ulink
url="https://lwn.net/Alerts/">lwn.net/Alerts</ulink>
is unrestricted).
</para>
<para>
For some packages, subscribing to their &apos;announce&apos; lists
will provide prompt news of newer versions.
</para>
</sect2>
</sect1>