cat looks inside meme template: DSA 6528-1: "Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel" / looks inside / 1,313 CVEs
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[–] [S] 24 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 child)

Debian problems I guess

Not really; the Linux kernel has had 8500 CVEs so far this year (according to this).

Most of them aren't actually known to be definitely-exploitable security bugs, but some are. You can read more about how Linux issues CVEs from this post on Greg Kroah-Hartman's website: Linux CVEs, more than you ever wanted to know (and/or watch one of his talks on the subject which is linked from there).

See also this article from July: Linux kernel team publishes 432 CVEs in two days: Sunday-to-Monday onslaught fuels speculation over AI-assisted bug reports.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 hours ago

    Yeah, just to add some context, you can detect potential buffer overruns in code by looking for patterns but just because you find potential buffer overruns doesn't mean they are exploitable. The user needs to be able to inject not just code or parameters but also a return address that causes the injected code to run or triggers another function call with the injected parameters. With randomized code and stack addresses, this can be difficult or practically impossible, even if it's easy to customize what bytes go into the overrun part of the buffer.

    It's like finding small parts of dangerous patterns but those small parts aren't necessarily dangerous on their own and need more of the pattern to be an issue, but if you fix the small parts you find, you're less likely run into those bigger patterns, so it's worthwhile to fix the small patterns when they come up, but without fitting into a larger pattern, it wasn't an actual security hole, just a potential one.

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