Hacker News Reader

Comment by mehrdadn | Hacker News Reader

What I was trying to say was I think library users care to know how urgent it is. If this is being used in the wild then application vendors might need to provide out-of-band patches somehow, and end users should rush to get those patches. If OTOH this is known to be extremely hard to pull off and not known to be used, then it'd be nice for users to know that just the same. Nowhere was I trying to suggest they should avoid providing the patch altogether or something.

View on HN

I agree with the idea that availability of information is good, and that information about the context for a security-related change should be made transparent. But how relevant is it? I would think relevant enough for FAQ or other reference information. I wouldn't include it in announcements, though.

The headline is "patch available, mitigating known exploit". "Not yet widely exploited" is barely a footnote. The release of a patch can bring enough attention to make the window between release and full deployment of the patch the single worst time to be vulnerable. If I tell you it wasn't being exploited yesterday, and you delay patching based on that information, and then the storm of exploits blows through ... I'd feel bad.

> I would think relevant enough for FAQ or other reference information. I wouldn't include it in announcements, though.

Maybe you wouldn't, but US-CERT, Mozilla, etc. do...

https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current-activity/2019/06/18/Moz...

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-1...

That's not how security works. If it can potentially lead to a software like openssh leaking secrets, it is of the highest urgency, period. It doesn't matter if it is thought to be hard to exploit and it doesn't matter if it was already found "in the wild".

Okay, but if 1 of my 3 highest urgency vulnerabilities is known to have been exploited in the wild, and is easy to exploit, then I may want to focus on that one over the other 2.

Alright, I should have said it is "critical" instead

> That's not how security works. If it can potentially lead to a software like openssh leaking secrets, it is of the highest urgency, period. It doesn't matter if it thought to be hard to exploit and it doesn't matter if it was already found "in the wild".

Really? This isn't how security works? Yeah, I guess I forgot security is a 100% binary thing. That's why you never read actual security bulletins advising you when vulnerabilities are actively being exploited in the wild. It's insane to think that should matter or raise the urgency of a patch. [1] [2]

[1] https://www.us-cert.gov/ncas/current-activity/2019/06/18/Moz...

[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2019-1...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com