3 ms·

The features they are leaving out were presumably added for a reason. If someone is on a system that is using sudo-rs as a drop-in replacement (not under their

The features they are leaving out were presumably added for a reason. If someone is on a system that is using sudo-rs as a drop-in replacement (not under their control) and they need to use one of those less widely-used features, how secure is the work-around they have to use instead? I'm hoping this factored in to their analysis. Sometimes reimplementing something and leaving out lesser-used features to "reduce the attack surface" can sound an awful lot like "let them pound sand".

nucleardog 3y ago
Did you know you can set up an OpenVPN tunnel with no encryption or authentication? I'm sure for someone out there that's a make-or-break feature, but for the vast majority trying to use OpenVPN it's a massive, insecure footgun. (Hell, how many bugs have protocol negotiation led to in OpenVPN/SSL/etc?) Compare that to Wireguard that just says... it's encrypted. Full stop. Carry on. A lot of this tooling and technology was developed in a different era with different priorities. Security, and especially network security, was not such a huge focus 30-40 years ago. Priorities have shifted. The operating environment is a lot more homogeneous (when's the last time you dealt with a layer 2 protocol besides ethernet?), while the risk of poor security has grown immensely. It's absolutely fair to critically evaluate these features and determine which can be removed to simplify and improve the products for the vast majority of users. If a small fraction of users stay on sudo, but the majority are able to move to a more secure option... that's a win. This is exactly what Wireguard provides versus OpenVPN.
marcus0x62 3y ago
Sure, and those people are free to continue to use the C-based implementation of sudo, implement the features themselves and submit patches to the maintainers of the rust sudo implementation, etc. But, the idea that a feature, once implemented, is sacrosanct and can never be deprecated is insane, especially for a piece of critical security infrastructure.
- infamouscow 3y ago
  Having disdain for real-world business requirements is probably why Rust sees so little use in the real world.
  - marcus0x62 3y ago
    That’s an interesting criticism. With commercial projects I’ve been involved in, feature deprecation was always based on a business case built on cost vs future revenue projections, not on a sense of duty to maintain ever single feature forever, regardless or whether or not anyone actually used it.

nucleardog 3y ago

Did you know you can set up an OpenVPN tunnel with no encryption or authentication? I'm sure for someone out there that's a make-or-break feature, but for the vast majority trying to use OpenVPN it's a massive, insecure footgun. (Hell, how many bugs have protocol negotiation led to in OpenVPN/SSL/etc?) Compare that to Wireguard that just says... it's encrypted. Full stop. Carry on. A lot of this tooling and technology was developed in a different era with different priorities. Security, and especially network security, was not such a huge focus 30-40 years ago. Priorities have shifted. The operating environment is a lot more homogeneous (when's the last time you dealt with a layer 2 protocol besides ethernet?), while the risk of poor security has grown immensely. It's absolutely fair to critically evaluate these features and determine which can be removed to simplify and improve the products for the vast majority of users. If a small fraction of users stay on sudo, but the majority are able to move to a more secure option... that's a win. This is exactly what Wireguard provides versus OpenVPN.

marcus0x62 3y ago

Sure, and those people are free to continue to use the C-based implementation of sudo, implement the features themselves and submit patches to the maintainers of the rust sudo implementation, etc. But, the idea that a feature, once implemented, is sacrosanct and can never be deprecated is insane, especially for a piece of critical security infrastructure.

infamouscow 3y ago
Having disdain for real-world business requirements is probably why Rust sees so little use in the real world.
- marcus0x62 3y ago
  That’s an interesting criticism. With commercial projects I’ve been involved in, feature deprecation was always based on a business case built on cost vs future revenue projections, not on a sense of duty to maintain ever single feature forever, regardless or whether or not anyone actually used it.