A public outing of severe and unfixed Linux kernel vulnerabilities should have you thinking of updating your SteamOS or other distros to beta branches
https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/a-public-outing-of-severe-and-unfixed-linux-kernel-vulnerabilities-should-have-you-thinking-of-updating-your-steamos-or-other-distros-to-beta-branches/Open linkView original on piefed.ca
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This article is more than little silly, at least for the target audience. These security vulnerabilities are of great concern to system administrators, but it's overblown to say that Linux gamers everywhere need to worry about these. The two remote code execution vulnerabilities are only a concern if you're running a
ksmbdserver. Who's running a Windows-protocol file server on their Steam Deck?? C'mon now...Beat me to it, what exactly is the attack vector on my Steam Deck that mostly sleeps and is on a limited segment behind my firewall and is only used for games 🙄
Someone can delete all your fortnite progress
Don't threaten me with a good time
It is also not immediately dangerous to run ksmbd, as 99.9% of users aren't exposing a SMB share to the internet. Most of them will be shared through a LAN at most, and even on enterprise solutions they're only accessed through a VPN.
It's definitely an issue for lateral movement through a network once it's infected, but that's not something regular users should worry about, for the most part.
Of course, apply the patch once it's available, but yeah, this is mostly a nothingburger.
Shouldn't it have these distro maintainers thinking of quickly merging security fixes into their stable branches?
I didn't read it but there are always vulnerabilities and rushing may introduce other bugs or vulnerabilities. There's a reason why it's first in beta.
Some of these bugs don't even have a fix yet, at least not one that's committed to the kernel source. The real headline here is that Trend Micro fucked up and blasted the vulnerabilities and proof code to the Linux kernel public mailing list instead of the private vulnerability disclosure email address. They basically gave hackers everywhere a bunch of new zero-day exploits, for free. Absolute clownshoes behaviour.
Gotcha! Thanks!
Run the stable branch of something that's used in servers. So Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL-equivalents. Ubuntu with the free ESM sounds pretty good right now. Keep unattended security updates on. Reboot often.
Luckily the list of vulnerabilities mentioned here not being patched ASAP won't make me lose any sleep.
The headline seems to be predicated on the assumption that stable branches receive fixes faster.
I'm not convinced that this holds true, does anyone know?
Slightly. Beta branches are usually maintained by the developers for development and not always subject to the same scrutiny as the main branch.
"a little worrisome" is understating it by a lot
LMBO This has not been a good couple of months