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If you don’t use the code, you’re not vulnerable > who should get the blame? The users? If you leverage a ton of open source deps, shit is going to happen. Yo

If you don’t use the code, you’re not vulnerable > who should get the blame? The users? If you leverage a ton of open source deps, shit is going to happen. You should not blame anyone. But if you must, yes: blame the users that choose such piss-poor software.

dylan604 5y ago
Just because someone releases code with AS IS/NO WARRANTY/BLAH BLAH BLAH doesn't mean they should not get called out for introducing such a vuln. Yes, you chose the code, failed to evaluate it's security, etc, but at the end of they day, the Log4* devs made a very very bad decision. Sadly, because of it's deep use in so many projects, it has kind of become too big to fail. I doubt %1 of users will swap out the logging package for something else. They will all wait for the Log4 devs to keep releasing updates. People keep singing the praises of FOSS, but yet whenever this kind of shit happens, it's always the user's fault for choosing poorly which packages are being used. I'm saying that the original devs are criminals, but they did the original sin here. The fault ultimately lies at their feet. Why is this such a unrespected point of view?
- 5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
  Would it be any better if this library was a proprietary product, the vulnerability would have been discovered by NSA and exploited until the end of time? Come to think of it, they wouldn't even have to search for any exploits. Just ask devs nicely to put the backdoor in and be done with it.
  - kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
    Who said anything about 'nicely'? Or 'ask'?
- alanfranz 5y ago
  Discussion is ok. Disrespect is not. What original sin? What fault? You’re basically saying that log4j developers lured you into temptation, otherwise you would have coded your own logging library, which, for sure, would have been better. I haven’t seen 1/100 of this hatred for Apple iMessage vuln that led to NSO zero-click exploits, and I don’t get why.
  - filmgirlcw 5y ago
    > I haven’t seen 1/100 of this hatred for Apple iMessage vuln that led to NSO zero-click exploits, and I don’t get why. I think there are a few reasons for this, and most of them aren’t based on logic, but emotion. First, as bad as the NSO zero-click exploits are, they aren’t things that developers were potentially injecting into their own projects. So there is an easier force to “blame” — Apple (for making the mistakes in the first place — and to be clear, all software can have bugs) and NSO Group (for being pieces of shit) — whereas if you either chose Log4j for your own project, or more likely, chose a project/product that chose to use Log4j, the “who to blame” question becomes a lot less comfortable to answer. At least with the NSO thing, there is a face of who the bad guy is. So it’s easy to sort of not hate Apple, provided Apple patched exploits as soon as they found them. That doesn’t mean that Apple, a company that has used its “better” security relative to its competitors one of its marketing messages, gets off easy. It’s a black mark for them for sure and will make it harder for the company to argue that it is so much more secure than x, y, z service or platform. With Log4j, similar to OpenSSL, people have to grapple with the reality that they don’t really know a lot about a lot of the code they run — and even worse, acknowledge that they aren’t capable of understanding or auditing that code themselves. I certainly don’t understand a lot of the code and libraries I rely on for things I build. And if I really stop to think about that, that’s scary. Fortunately, my own projects are personal and aren’t taking data from others. But facing that reality can be a difficult pill to swallow. And Log4j is even worse than OpenSSL in a way, because one could be forgiven for having trust in a well-respected cryptographic library, and for not having a deep understanding of how that library works. But having an insecure logging library? That almost feels avoidable — even if it isn’t. So people want to blame someone. And when it looks like the code — made by volunteers or not — wasn’t the best written, that’s an easy thing to go to. Rather than self-reflecting about all the libraries we use every day that we don’t think about the security or code quality of. It doesn’t help that the disclosure, for a host of reasons, wasn’t good. That isn’t me blaming the Log4j team, it just is what it is. Disclosure wasn’t great and the fury to patch made some mistakes and now that there is outsized attention on the library, even more vulnerabilities have been found. Which is all understandable and indicative of what often happens in high stress situations. Ultimately, we should all accept that mistakes happen and that this wasn’t done out of malice. We all have some level of culpability for what we choose to use in our projects. But mistakes happen. And as you say, discussion is OK but disrespect isn’t. But I think we see lashing out because people want to find someone to blame.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  > I'm saying that the original devs are criminals That’s an unbelievable stretch. I wonder how your mind works.
  - dylan604 5y ago
    Sorry, I absolutely meant to include NOT in that sentence. No, I do not believe they are criminals. I am guilty of not double checking my post to make sure it says what I meant to say.

dylan604 5y ago

Just because someone releases code with AS IS/NO WARRANTY/BLAH BLAH BLAH doesn't mean they should not get called out for introducing such a vuln. Yes, you chose the code, failed to evaluate it's security, etc, but at the end of they day, the Log4* devs made a very very bad decision. Sadly, because of it's deep use in so many projects, it has kind of become too big to fail. I doubt %1 of users will swap out the logging package for something else. They will all wait for the Log4 devs to keep releasing updates. People keep singing the praises of FOSS, but yet whenever this kind of shit happens, it's always the user's fault for choosing poorly which packages are being used. I'm saying that the original devs are criminals, but they did the original sin here. The fault ultimately lies at their feet. Why is this such a unrespected point of view?

5e92cb50239222b 5y ago
Would it be any better if this library was a proprietary product, the vulnerability would have been discovered by NSA and exploited until the end of time? Come to think of it, they wouldn't even have to search for any exploits. Just ask devs nicely to put the backdoor in and be done with it.
- kafkaIncarnate 5y ago
  Who said anything about 'nicely'? Or 'ask'?
alanfranz 5y ago
Discussion is ok. Disrespect is not. What original sin? What fault? You’re basically saying that log4j developers lured you into temptation, otherwise you would have coded your own logging library, which, for sure, would have been better. I haven’t seen 1/100 of this hatred for Apple iMessage vuln that led to NSO zero-click exploits, and I don’t get why.
- filmgirlcw 5y ago
  > I haven’t seen 1/100 of this hatred for Apple iMessage vuln that led to NSO zero-click exploits, and I don’t get why. I think there are a few reasons for this, and most of them aren’t based on logic, but emotion. First, as bad as the NSO zero-click exploits are, they aren’t things that developers were potentially injecting into their own projects. So there is an easier force to “blame” — Apple (for making the mistakes in the first place — and to be clear, all software can have bugs) and NSO Group (for being pieces of shit) — whereas if you either chose Log4j for your own project, or more likely, chose a project/product that chose to use Log4j, the “who to blame” question becomes a lot less comfortable to answer. At least with the NSO thing, there is a face of who the bad guy is. So it’s easy to sort of not hate Apple, provided Apple patched exploits as soon as they found them. That doesn’t mean that Apple, a company that has used its “better” security relative to its competitors one of its marketing messages, gets off easy. It’s a black mark for them for sure and will make it harder for the company to argue that it is so much more secure than x, y, z service or platform. With Log4j, similar to OpenSSL, people have to grapple with the reality that they don’t really know a lot about a lot of the code they run — and even worse, acknowledge that they aren’t capable of understanding or auditing that code themselves. I certainly don’t understand a lot of the code and libraries I rely on for things I build. And if I really stop to think about that, that’s scary. Fortunately, my own projects are personal and aren’t taking data from others. But facing that reality can be a difficult pill to swallow. And Log4j is even worse than OpenSSL in a way, because one could be forgiven for having trust in a well-respected cryptographic library, and for not having a deep understanding of how that library works. But having an insecure logging library? That almost feels avoidable — even if it isn’t. So people want to blame someone. And when it looks like the code — made by volunteers or not — wasn’t the best written, that’s an easy thing to go to. Rather than self-reflecting about all the libraries we use every day that we don’t think about the security or code quality of. It doesn’t help that the disclosure, for a host of reasons, wasn’t good. That isn’t me blaming the Log4j team, it just is what it is. Disclosure wasn’t great and the fury to patch made some mistakes and now that there is outsized attention on the library, even more vulnerabilities have been found. Which is all understandable and indicative of what often happens in high stress situations. Ultimately, we should all accept that mistakes happen and that this wasn’t done out of malice. We all have some level of culpability for what we choose to use in our projects. But mistakes happen. And as you say, discussion is OK but disrespect isn’t. But I think we see lashing out because people want to find someone to blame.
TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> I'm saying that the original devs are criminals That’s an unbelievable stretch. I wonder how your mind works.
- dylan604 5y ago
  Sorry, I absolutely meant to include NOT in that sentence. No, I do not believe they are criminals. I am guilty of not double checking my post to make sure it says what I meant to say.