3 ms·

DJB maybe is a prominent cryptographer, but his code and security practices, especially around Qmail, are simply atrocious. I wouldn't quote him for anything th

by dozzie 11y ago

DJB maybe is a prominent cryptographer, but his code and security practices, especially around Qmail, are simply atrocious. I wouldn't quote him for anything that touches real C code.

regularfry 11y ago
Uncompromising and inconvenient to work with, maybe. Why atrocious?
- dozzie 11y ago
  Have you seen, for example, how he structured his code? One file per C function, with no header files. And guess what? He still does that to new code.
  - dfc 11y ago
    One file per C function enables an attacker to _____ qmail/djbdns/etc. ???
  - marssaxman 11y ago
    One file per C function is an old practice you can still see in many libc implementations and in other pieces of code designed to be used as a static library. Since a traditional Unix static library is nothing but an archive of .o files, and a traditional Unix linker makes its include-or-omit decisions on the granularity of an .o file, putting each function in a separate source file maximizes the linker's ability to strip unused functions out of a static library.
  - regularfry 11y ago
    glibc does something similar. I'm not sure I see the problem. It's different, but I wouldn't call it bad.
dfc 11y ago
Can you elaborate on this? I have never thought of "atrocious" when someone mentioned the history of vulnerabilities in djb's software. Depending on how egregious these security practices are there could be a $500 check in it for you.
- dozzie 11y ago
  > I have never thought of "atrocious" when someone mentioned the history of vulnerabilities in djb's software. You mean when DJB denied Qmail has bugs? http://www.dt.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html http://www.dt.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html Unfortunately, 404 at the moment, but Internet Archive has a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20160409054053/http://www.dt.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160409054053/http://www.dt.e-t...
  - dfc 11y ago
    Yes, "atrocious security" is not my reaction to a 15 year old MTA with two DoS and two RCEs.
    - dozzie 11y ago
      Oh yes, because denying that your code has a vulnerability counts as a good security practice. You know why this MTA has that low count of published bugs? Because nobody uses it anymore, so nobody looks at its code (and now factor in the ugliness of the code itself, which lowers the eagerness to look at the code even more). It's not because the code is (magically?) better.

by dozzie 11y ago

DJB maybe is a prominent cryptographer, but his code and security practices, especially around Qmail, are simply atrocious. I wouldn't quote him for anything that touches real C code.

regularfry 11y ago

Uncompromising and inconvenient to work with, maybe. Why atrocious?

dozzie 11y ago
Have you seen, for example, how he structured his code? One file per C function, with no header files. And guess what? He still does that to new code.
- dfc 11y ago
  One file per C function enables an attacker to _____ qmail/djbdns/etc. ???
- marssaxman 11y ago
  One file per C function is an old practice you can still see in many libc implementations and in other pieces of code designed to be used as a static library. Since a traditional Unix static library is nothing but an archive of .o files, and a traditional Unix linker makes its include-or-omit decisions on the granularity of an .o file, putting each function in a separate source file maximizes the linker's ability to strip unused functions out of a static library.
- regularfry 11y ago
  glibc does something similar. I'm not sure I see the problem. It's different, but I wouldn't call it bad.

dfc 11y ago

Can you elaborate on this? I have never thought of "atrocious" when someone mentioned the history of vulnerabilities in djb's software. Depending on how egregious these security practices are there could be a $500 check in it for you.

dozzie 11y ago
> I have never thought of "atrocious" when someone mentioned the history of vulnerabilities in djb's software. You mean when DJB denied Qmail has bugs? http://www.dt.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html http://www.dt.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html Unfortunately, 404 at the moment, but Internet Archive has a copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20160409054053/http://www.dt.e-technik.tu-dortmund.de/~ma/qmail-bugs.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160409054053/http://www.dt.e-t...
- dfc 11y ago
  Yes, "atrocious security" is not my reaction to a 15 year old MTA with two DoS and two RCEs.
  - dozzie 11y ago
    Oh yes, because denying that your code has a vulnerability counts as a good security practice. You know why this MTA has that low count of published bugs? Because nobody uses it anymore, so nobody looks at its code (and now factor in the ugliness of the code itself, which lowers the eagerness to look at the code even more). It's not because the code is (magically?) better.