5 ms·

FWIW, "good review" is pretty debatable (source: was involved) -- it provides a decent overview, but you should read it with the thought in mind that the author

FWIW, "good review" is pretty debatable (source: was involved) -- it provides a decent overview, but you should read it with the thought in mind that the author did some pretty heavy cherry-picking to support their arguments. Also, this indeed is not "Kernel Debugging Quarterly."

mbreese 6y ago
I thought the Ars article was a pretty good overview for the context of this current issue and why there needs to be a statement on FreeBSD development practices at all. I don't expect Ars to get into too many kernel specifics, so won't knock them for that. But as far as bringing more attention to how the mess started in the first place (and was dealt with), I think the Ars article is a pretty good place to start. I mean, the question of how the rough-draft Wireguard implementation made it into the kernel in the first place without sufficient review is a pretty big question. I'm happy the FreeBSD team is addressing it directly.
- kevans91 6y ago
  Yeah, sorry, I'm mostly lamenting that there's not a more objective overview. This whole situation is pretty tiring at this point, so it's unlikely that one will surface except as a post-mortem down the road.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    I think that unfortunately a lot of people can't separate "this code is bad" from "this person is bad". We all have times when we don't ship our best work. Life happens. It's also worth noting to the readers that Donenfeld's criticism of bad code is completely dispassionate and that he isn't above criticising himself. He seems to be genuinely among the nicest people in the community. This seems unfortunate for mmacy and unfortunately exacerbated by the behavior of Netgate.
    - loeg 6y ago
      > It's also worth noting to the readers that Donenfeld's criticism of bad code is completely dispassionate and that he isn't above criticising himself. Er, what? Donenfeld's hyperbole and wild characterizations are part of what fanned the flames and made this a tech-press mess instead of some quiet collaboration and bug reports.[0] > The first step was assessing the current state of the code the previous developer had dumped into the tree. It was not pretty. I imagined strange Internet voices jeering, “this is what gives C a bad name!” There were random sleeps added to “fix” race conditions, validation functions that just returned true, catastrophic cryptographic vulnerabilities, whole parts of the protocol unimplemented, kernel panics, security bypasses, overflows, random printf statements deep in crypto code, the most spectacular buffer overflows, and the whole litany of awful things that go wrong when people aren’t careful when they write C. While some details are based in reality, the paragraph goes well beyond the realm of truth. It makes totally unnecessarily jabs at Macy as "the previous developer." He is (broadly) a competent C/kernel developer. Yes, he did an inadequate job here. No, some Greek chorus isn't jeering about the C code just because stylistically it differs from how Donenfeld would write it. To my knowledge: * There was only a single "validation function that returned true," and it involved validating an ip address internal to a validated and decoded message from a wg peer. The message is already cryptographically verified; only peers that are part of the same mesh could spoof IPs outside of their configured range. (Donenfeld described this as validation functions, plural.) * Donenfeld's only ever found a single real buffer overflow. It's the one where Jumbo frames can cause heap overflow. His other buffer overflow claims are not realistic due to other constraints on the inputs. Mostly they seem to reflect stylistic preferences about using mallocarray(a, n) instead of malloc(a * n). So the claims of "spectacular" buffer overflow(s), plural, feels disingenuous. (I don't know what "spectacular" is supposed to mean in a cold technical critique, either.) Maybe this is "dispassionate," but it seems unnecessarily careless with the facts when writing technical criticism. To be clear, Netgate's press response to this was totally inappropriate and also just a dumb move. The public narrative would be more in their favor if they had been totally silent instead of posting the angry screed they did. Ars takes Donenfeld's hyperbole and runs with it, fact-checking only the easily verified claims. And there is some truthiness to it! Unfortunately, it's the rest of the communication that leaves something wanting. Anyway, I love wireguard and what Donenfeld has accomplished. I just wish the guy would be a bit more considerate and less colorful when writing sensitive emails. [0]: https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2021-March/006494.html https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2021-March/00649...

mbreese 6y ago

I thought the Ars article was a pretty good overview for the context of this current issue and why there needs to be a statement on FreeBSD development practices at all. I don't expect Ars to get into too many kernel specifics, so won't knock them for that. But as far as bringing more attention to how the mess started in the first place (and was dealt with), I think the Ars article is a pretty good place to start. I mean, the question of how the rough-draft Wireguard implementation made it into the kernel in the first place without sufficient review is a pretty big question. I'm happy the FreeBSD team is addressing it directly.

kevans91 6y ago
Yeah, sorry, I'm mostly lamenting that there's not a more objective overview. This whole situation is pretty tiring at this point, so it's unlikely that one will surface except as a post-mortem down the road.
- busterarm 6y ago
  I think that unfortunately a lot of people can't separate "this code is bad" from "this person is bad". We all have times when we don't ship our best work. Life happens. It's also worth noting to the readers that Donenfeld's criticism of bad code is completely dispassionate and that he isn't above criticising himself. He seems to be genuinely among the nicest people in the community. This seems unfortunate for mmacy and unfortunately exacerbated by the behavior of Netgate.
  - loeg 6y ago
    > It's also worth noting to the readers that Donenfeld's criticism of bad code is completely dispassionate and that he isn't above criticising himself. Er, what? Donenfeld's hyperbole and wild characterizations are part of what fanned the flames and made this a tech-press mess instead of some quiet collaboration and bug reports.[0] > The first step was assessing the current state of the code the previous developer had dumped into the tree. It was not pretty. I imagined strange Internet voices jeering, “this is what gives C a bad name!” There were random sleeps added to “fix” race conditions, validation functions that just returned true, catastrophic cryptographic vulnerabilities, whole parts of the protocol unimplemented, kernel panics, security bypasses, overflows, random printf statements deep in crypto code, the most spectacular buffer overflows, and the whole litany of awful things that go wrong when people aren’t careful when they write C. While some details are based in reality, the paragraph goes well beyond the realm of truth. It makes totally unnecessarily jabs at Macy as "the previous developer." He is (broadly) a competent C/kernel developer. Yes, he did an inadequate job here. No, some Greek chorus isn't jeering about the C code just because stylistically it differs from how Donenfeld would write it. To my knowledge: * There was only a single "validation function that returned true," and it involved validating an ip address internal to a validated and decoded message from a wg peer. The message is already cryptographically verified; only peers that are part of the same mesh could spoof IPs outside of their configured range. (Donenfeld described this as validation functions, plural.) * Donenfeld's only ever found a single real buffer overflow. It's the one where Jumbo frames can cause heap overflow. His other buffer overflow claims are not realistic due to other constraints on the inputs. Mostly they seem to reflect stylistic preferences about using mallocarray(a, n) instead of malloc(a * n). So the claims of "spectacular" buffer overflow(s), plural, feels disingenuous. (I don't know what "spectacular" is supposed to mean in a cold technical critique, either.) Maybe this is "dispassionate," but it seems unnecessarily careless with the facts when writing technical criticism. To be clear, Netgate's press response to this was totally inappropriate and also just a dumb move. The public narrative would be more in their favor if they had been totally silent instead of posting the angry screed they did. Ars takes Donenfeld's hyperbole and runs with it, fact-checking only the easily verified claims. And there is some truthiness to it! Unfortunately, it's the rest of the communication that leaves something wanting. Anyway, I love wireguard and what Donenfeld has accomplished. I just wish the guy would be a bit more considerate and less colorful when writing sensitive emails. [0]: https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2021-March/006494.html https://lists.zx2c4.com/pipermail/wireguard/2021-March/00649...