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>"The majority of the world runs Debian or they run their own kernel," Kroah-Hartman said. "Debian was not allowed to be part of the disclosure, so the majority
by cthalupa 8y ago
>"The majority of the world runs Debian or they run their own kernel," Kroah-Hartman said. "Debian was not allowed to be part of the disclosure, so the majority of the world was caught with their pants down, and that's not good."
Is there any actual statistics to back this up? I feel like RHEL and to a lesser extent CentOS have a stranglehold on the big enterprise-y environments, and I see Ubuntu basically everywhere else, and Canonical does their own kernels.
Edit: To be clear, I am aware Ubunbtu is a Debian derivative, but since we're talking specifically about who was informed for kernel level mitigations, and Canonical does their own kernels, it seems weird to talk about how Debian wasn't informed and thus people were affected, when Ubuntu being updated wasn't reliant on Debian being updated.
- sounds 8y agoPerhaps Greg-KH was implicitly including Ubuntu under Debian?
- 2trill2spill 8y agoYea I don't use Linux too often but how different is an Ubuntu kernel compared to a Debian kernel? I know Ubuntu is downstream from Debian or at least they were. So how much extra work/code does Canonical add to its kernels.
- cthalupa 8y agoCanonical had Spectre and Meltdown mitigations out for their kernels before Debian did, and he also specifically mentions Canonical as getting alerted, so apparently enough.
- _arvin 8y agoI think there should be a distinction between Canonical and debian, but Ubuntu is certainly based on Debian, and the latter should be used when talking big scale like he did. Many cloud services and providers run on Ubuntu, and as long as Ubuntu uses apt and .deb, it's Debian (along with Linux Mint, elementaryOS, etc)
- craftyguy 8y ago> and as long as Ubuntu uses apt and .deb, it's Debian No, there is more to a distro than them sharing a common package manager/format. The kernel, which is heavily patched by canonical, differs from what Debian ships. Canonical also has a bad habit of carrying a lot of non-upstream patches for other core system components. Ubuntu may have been derived from Debian at one point, but they are fairly different at this point. So much so that you cannot take a system running Debian and 'upgrade' (or downgrade, depending on your point of view) it to one running Ubuntu.
- StudentStuff 8y agoActually, you can smash Debian & ubuntu together, you just get a terrible monster called frankendebian. As a youngster I tried this, it didn't pan out.
- int_19h 8y agoA distro, for the most part is 1) package manager + repos, and 2) system organization (where things get installed, where configs are, how services are managed etc). In that respect, Ubuntu is still Debian - most packages are vanilla Debian packages, and they both use systemd.
- geezerjay 8y ago> So much so that you cannot take a system running Debian and 'upgrade' (or downgrade, depending on your point of view) it to one running Ubuntu. That doesn't say much, as sometimes ubuntu and debian upgrades are far from smooth. As a long Debian & Ubuntu user, I believe you're exagerating the work invested by Ubuntu to custonize Debian. Betond the default desktop environment and attitude regarding proprietary drivers, the work done by Ubuntu is rather negligible.
- bonzini 8y agoCanonical was alerted, but they still had a delay of several weeks before they had an update.
- vbernat 8y agoThat's not true. - https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4078 https://www.debian.org/security/2018/dsa-4078 (January 4th) - https://usn.ubuntu.com/3522-1/ https://usn.ubuntu.com/3522-1/ (January 9th) Canonical got caught in the shortened embargo and didn't modify their schedule while everyone else did.
- Twirrim 8y agoAs mentioned in the article, Canonical were brought in much earlier by Intel. They appear to have been among the "chosen few": RedHat, SuSE and Canonical.
- stefan_ 8y agoThe majority of Linux installations is probably Android smartphones, and well Google was informed alright, but still 95% of those phones were caught with their pants down because well their pants had fallen down a long long time ago given they last received security updates years ago.
- joe_the_user 8y agoHow many android installations use Intel processors? Edit: never mind, Android was apparently indeed effected. https://www.androidcentral.com/meltdown-spectre https://www.androidcentral.com/meltdown-spectre
- gsnedders 8y agoSpectre affected virtually every out-of-order execution CPU in existence; Meltdown was much more limited in scope (and very few non-Intel CPUs were affected, but some were).
- DCKing 8y agoSpectre and Meltdown are a problem for Android but it's a smaller problem than on PCs. The vast majority of Android phones use processors that are in-order, and lack the out-of-order execution necessary to exploit. High-end Android phones with out-of-order processors (the minority) are only vulnerable to Spectre, but it's a little complicated [1]. Then there is only one ARM core (Cortex A75) that is vulnerable to Meltdown, but that was released after the vulnerability was published, so software could ship with mitigations in place. [1]: https://github.com/lgeek/spec_poc_arm https://github.com/lgeek/spec_poc_arm
- gsnedders 8y agoSome of Apple's A-series processors were affected by Meltdown too, AFAIK, though obviously that doesn't affect Android. (But is another ARM core vulnerable to it.)
- dijit 8y agoI can speak to the companies I've worked for: US companies (and, this includes the UK because apparently we love to be like america) use CentOS predominantly, but mainland europe (Sweden, Germany, Finland) seem to prefer Debian. I can say that I've personally administered roughly a 1:1 ratio of CentOS:Debian despite coming from a country that's servers tend to be CentOS. Of course, this is anecdotal, but don't undersell debian.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- bluedino 8y agoIs SuSE still popular in Europe? (Apologies if I got the capitalization wrong)
- pjmlp 8y agoBesides SAP deployments I guess not much. Here in Germany it is mostly Red-Hat/CentOS or Ubuntu, on the projects I have been involved. So anecdote data.
- gaius 8y agoSince 2008 working for US/UK companies I have only seen RHEL and CentOS (prior to that, mostly SunOS/Solaris). I prefer Debian personally but for the last few years I have used CentOS for my own projects too - too much effort to maintain two parallel sets of skills now I am not really into OS level stuff anymore.
- xchaotic 8y agoI'm sure he cares a lot about Debian and a lot of my early learning was on Debian derivatives but I feel that the production server side world has largely standardised on RedHat. Non RedHat/CentOS, non-Ubuntu debian distros are probably a distant fifth in terms of business critical production server so no wonder they were not included in the disclosure early on...
- jessaustin 8y agoDoes CentOS get immediate updates like this? My overwhelming impression of that platform is that everything is years out of date... of course maybe that's just the fault of the organizations I've encountered that have used CentOS.
- bonzini 8y agoYes it does. Both RHEL and CentOS have a kernel that is "officially" 3.10 but feature-wise is probably something like 4.10-ish for RHEL 7.5 (which was released last April). RHEL and CentOS 7 had updates for all of Spectre, Meltdown and Foreshadow on the day of unembargo-ing.
- nineteen999 8y agoI'm pretty sure it's being kept fairly up to date since Redhat acquired it. Bear in mind that it's a RHEL clone so it's usually about as out of date as RHEL is - which is what we generally want in the infrastructure/telco/banking space because stability is preferred over shiny new features.
- fl0wenol 8y agoCentOS gets patches as soon as Red Hat publishes the source RPMs upstream or pushes changes to git.centos.org. What can be confusing about CentOS/RHEL is that many shops using them are on a release that came out years ago. But that's an issue because Red Hat supports 10 year lifecycles for their releases, and will go on supporting them indefinitely if you pay them enough. All the software bundled gets feature and security updates through it's lifecycle, just without changing any interfaces, ABIs, or version numbers. This is great for shops that aren't looking to operate on the bleeding edge and have expensive COTS or bespoke software stacks sitting on top. Of course, you still have to patch, and organizations can't be forced to do that. Hopefully what you were encountering was just the former and not the latter at those organizations.
- l0b0 8y agoTranslation: s/The majority of the world runs/My fellow Debian kernel developers run/
- bogomipz 8y agoUbuntu is a Debian derivative[1], I imagine that is what he means: [1] https://www.debian.org/derivatives/ https://www.debian.org/derivatives/
- cthalupa 8y agoYes, but the problem is we're talking specifically about kernel level mitigations, and Canonical rolls their own kernels. They do NOT use debian kernels.
- bogomipz 8y agoPlease re-read the context. I was simply explaining to the OP why this individual may have said this.
- kelnos 8y agoThat doesn't make sense, though. Debian and Ubuntu each roll their own kernels. Canonical was one of the chosen few that had advance warning from Intel. Debian did not, so it wouldn't make sense for Greg K-H to be talking about Ubuntu at all when he referenced Debian.
- pera 8y ago> The Linux distribution can be positively identified in around 30% of cases, and of these 1.39 million Linux computers, just over half are running Ubuntu Linux, nearly a quarter are running CentOS, and around fifth are running Debian Linux. https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/09/11/september-2017-web-server-survey.html https://news.netcraft.com/archives/2017/09/11/september-2017...
- craftyguy 8y agoThere are a massive number of systems running Linux that are not publicly facing (e.g. compute/service nodes in supercomputers, systems for providing internal infrastructure for R&D, manufacturing, etc).
- proginthebox 8y agoSuch systems also most likely are not vulnerable to Meltdown/Spectre.
- vokep 8y agoWhy would you begin to think that at all? Because they're offline doesn't mean that they're safe, just safe from more than an online system.
- darpa_escapee 8y agoThose systems might be immune to attacks that networked machines are vulnerable to, but often networked attacks are used in order to leverage another exploit, such as Meltdown/Spectre. A vector other than the network could be exploited to leverage an attack that utilizes Meltdown/Spectre.
- fulafel 8y agoMost the biggest software vulnerability catastrophies actually involve just such systems. "Secure internal network" is a 90s mirage. See eg https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-russia-code-crashed-the-world/ https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-rus...
- rurban 8y agoDesktop and personal PC has Ubuntu dominant, but servers are 70% CentOS. Nobody trusts Debian's security record and gcc/kernel abilities. He is right with the affected number in this case because this time bugs are affected by simple webpage drive-by Javascript attacks, like a common virus. So it affects Debian and Android more than servers and cloud services. And those are the ones which are not regularly updated so the security impact is bigger than on a server.
- curveship 8y agoBy "majority" he may have meant majority of Linux distributions, not majority of Linux users. There are a ton of distributions derived from Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census https://wiki.debian.org/Derivatives/Census . All of them would have to update their distros to respond to Meltdown.
- jfaioif3 8y agoIt's the typical arrogance of Debian developers and users. Debian is becoming completely irrelevant but they still keep their heads buried in the sand.
- shakna 8y agoWhy would an off-the-record statement, which is what he said this was, need to be 100% without exaggeration or hyperbole?
- cthalupa 8y agoThe article doesn't mention it was off the record, and I wasn't there, so how would I know it's off the record? But it seems likely that this isn't just exaggerated or hyperbolic, but just not close to accurate, in which case even if it's off the record it's silly.
- jack12 8y agohttps://youtu.be/lQZzm9z8g_U?t=1565 https://youtu.be/lQZzm9z8g_U?t=1565 seems to be the same talk delivered at another instance of this conference. He does claim one statistic that an unnamed "top 3" cloud provider told him that fewer than 10% of their customers install company-based kernels and over 90% install community-based kernels like debian or kernel.org code. He is not limiting "the majority" to just Debian, though. He is comparing installs of distributions backed by companies (like Red Hat+Canonical+SuSE) as "the minority" vs. every possible non-corporate-backed distribution or source.
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoI run centos in production. That's because of the following: 1. SELinux 2. OpenSCAP 3. 99% fit with RedHat None of the other Linux variants have those tools, or the time put in for compliance goodies. My time == $$$