Why I Don’t Use Debian Family Linux
Via Slashdot… In a nutshell…
Debian Bug Leaves Private SSL/SSH Keys Guessable
SecurityBob writes "Debian package maintainers tend to very often modify the source code of the package they are maintaining so that it better fits into the distribution itself. However, most of the time, their changes are not sent back to upstream for validation, which might cause some tension between upstream developers and Debian packagers. Today, a critical security advisory has been released: a Debian packager modified the source code of OpenSSL back in 2006 so as to remove the seeding of OpenSSL random number generator, which in turns makes cryptographic key material generated on a Debian system guessable. The solution? Upgrade OpenSSL and re-generate all your SSH and SSL keys. This problem not only affects Debian, but also all its derivatives, such as Ubuntu."
At last year’s Open Source Conference in Portland (OSCON), I was made aware of a wee dust-up between the Apache project and "some" Linux distros. Specifically, the Apache folks were complaining that certain Linux Distributions routinely modified their product, sticking libraries and configuration files wherever they damn well pleased because that was how, in their opinion, things should work.
Now…the beauty of Linux and open source in general is that it is open and community driven and anyone can do whatever they damn well please with it. I hope it always stays that way, Microsoft’s backdoor attempts to stifle it notwithstanding. But the other side of that coin is that if you modify someone else’s software to work with yours now it’s your responsibility. The Apache folks were complaining that they could not help end users configure their servers when they themselves didn’t know how the software worked anymore, particularly when it came to configuring it. That’s not a trivial complaint coming from a project that powers the majority of web servers. Most of what you see on the World Wide Web was fed to you by an Apache server, running on either Linux or Unix.
Well, the Debian folks pretty well knew who the Apache folks were talking about and sure as the sun rises they started pointing their fingers back at Apache’s big monolithic configuration file, and other in-their-righteous-opinion Apache shortcomings. Begun, the clone wars have…
My feeling is, if you change it you own it. At least in the sense of now you have to support it. At minimum you ought to run your "fixes’ by the people who are maintaining the software you are "correcting". They might actually appreciate what you’ve done and incorporate the changes into their build. Or they might tell you why you shouldn’t do that. Sometimes you should listen to that. But from what I hear, listening isn’t one of the Debian project’s best points.
I keep hearing about how wonderful Ubuntu is, and knowing that it’s a Debian family distro I’ve been highly reluctant to bother with it. I get along fine in the Red Hat family. For the past couple years I’ve been happily running CentOS here at Casa del Garrett and I admit I would like it a lot better if it came bundled with better multi-media support, but on the other hand adding packages to it isn’t hard because everything is pretty much where everyone expects it to be. Yes, I have to configure a lot of it in its own specific way, as opposed to having a nice common configuration system to do it for me. If you want consistency, open source isn’t going to work for you. Try Apple. Seriously. I run Macs here at Casa del Garrett too and damned if I haven’t been impressed by how well integrated everything is on a Mac. I do all my artwork on Bagheera, my art room G5 tower, because it just gets out of my way when I’m in a creative mood and lets me create. I love that. On the other hand, it’s like that because Steve won’t let software developers color outside the lines. Just ask anyone who ever unlocked an iPhone. That’s why I’m still running Linux here too.
May 13th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Ok, so Ubuntu’s got a security bug – how does someone with pretty minimal knowledge of computers fix the thing? (I run Ubuntu on my old machine)
I’ve put alerts on a couple of sites.
May 13th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Judging from the statement from Ubuntu I reckon you just update your ssh package and you’re golden. I don’t know how that works in Ubuntu, but if it’s like Debian you have to use apt-get. But I doubt Ubuntu will make you do that as it’s supposed to be more user friendly then that. So there must be something in a system menu somewhere that allows you to update your installed software. Whatever you normally use to do that is what you should probably look at. If you still have trouble let me know and I’ll try to dig into it.
Says you’re going to have to update all your ssh keys though, because you can’t trust them given the nature of this bug. Depending on how you use SSH that could be a hassle. If I had to do that I’d have a boatload of machines I’d have to be copying keys back and forth to after I did that.
But if you don’t even use ssh you might not have to worry about this. Do you? ssh is a secure terminal. You use it like you would use telnet, to logon to other machines on the net. It’s somewhat like telnet except it’s traffic is encrypted. If you’ve never used ssh, (or scp, which is a secure file copy program) you probably don’t have to worry. Do you even have a .ssh directory in your home directory? Do a "ls -la" and see if you have an .ssh or ssh2 directory. Become root and do the same thing on the /root directory. If you don’t even have any .ssh directories then you don’t have to worry too much about this bug because you’ve never generated any keys and that means you’ve never used ssh. Just don’t use it until you’ve updated ssh on your machine.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Reminds me of the infamous caveat all who used a DOS BBS server I ran for many year knew by heart: "Modify and experiment all you wish, but remember that if you break it, you own all the pieces." It’s author was a rocket scientist (yes, really), and he even printed that warning in his user manuals.