4 ms·

Problem is that lots of cases just cannot be replaced, period. But probably those people will keep around some old ubuntu and will be hacked through those, also

by szundi 3y ago

Problem is that lots of cases just cannot be replaced, period. But probably those people will keep around some old ubuntu and will be hacked through those, also not removing but keeping around after the deadline until it needs work would also make sense. If work would be needed, then just remove. We might have like 2-10 years before that happens. Whole stuff is about security and that kind of implies some “probably best before” tags anyway. Sacrificing security is not worth it and your reasoning is sane.

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
Yep, I work with some old industrial hardware, and most of it is stuck in the year it was made and never upgraded... rs232, rs485, telnet, etc., is a thing you see very often. Now with modern networks, you can isolate those machines and the machines controlling/monitoring them pretty efectively, so those segments never touch the internet, but you still need to connect to those devices and use them. Telnet and rs* just work, because noone complained about zero security there and wanted them removed... but now we're removing stuff that's still in use on newer devices that are not even at hal their 20, 30, 40year lifespans. I understand the security aspect, I know that telnet is insecure, but I know when, how and why it's insecure and use it accordingly... just add some -use-bad-crypto flag, maybe even make it as a module/plugin, and leave it working as it did.
- bigDinosaur 3y ago
  I don't see why such a flag is necessary when you can always use an old version of the software instead. That's your flag. Otherwise they would never drop support for anything ever, which seems less than ideal. Something simply existing in the code incurs a maintenance cost.
  - adastra22 3y ago
    > Otherwise they would never drop support for anything ever, which seems less than ideal. In the realm of operating systems and protocols, that sounds absolutely ideal. Microsoft has the right approach here.
    - bigDinosaur 3y ago
      In an ideal world where the maintenance cost and added complexity do not matter, yes, but that is not this world and we cannot have everything we want without compromises.
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    So how do I install the old version next to the new version in ubuntu 34.04? Will the old version even compile with gcc 27? Or will I have to find some ancient ubuntu image then, run it in a virtualbox, then run wget/curl on a newer virtual machine (becase old wget/curl won't support tls 2.4, and won't be able to download the script and after the command, http-POST the result), then copy the data to an old machine, run old ssh there, get the output, copy it to a new machine, and then http-post it from there? Imagine if every software was coded by this logic... nobody uses BMP images anymore? Just remove them from gimp... if users want BPM support, they'll use gimp 1.x. Security? Unencrypted http is insecure, just remove support for http from firefox/chrome... if users need to use http, they'll just uninstall the current version, backup their profile, install an old version, that doesn't support the lastest tls standards, open that website, copy the text they need from there into notepad, uninstall the old version, install the new version, restore their profile, open gmail and paste the text to an email... oh wait, you've missed something and need to copy some more text... whoops, back to uninstalling.
    - john-shaffer 3y ago
      > So how do I install the old version next to the new version in ubuntu 34.04? You would install Nix and run something similar to "nix run nixpkgs-23.11#openssh <address>"
      - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
        So, what's currently the oldest version of openssh that you can install this way?
        john-shaffer 3y ago
        export LC_ALL=C nix-shell -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/2322899a1fa85f6547004b2829af81e7b444f506.tar.gz -p openssh ssh -V OpenSSH_6.1p1, OpenSSL 1.0.0i 19 Apr 2012 Note that the first stable release of nixpkgs was in 2013.
    - bigDinosaur 3y ago

by szundi 3y ago

ajsnigrutin 3y ago

Yep, I work with some old industrial hardware, and most of it is stuck in the year it was made and never upgraded... rs232, rs485, telnet, etc., is a thing you see very often. Now with modern networks, you can isolate those machines and the machines controlling/monitoring them pretty efectively, so those segments never touch the internet, but you still need to connect to those devices and use them. Telnet and rs* just work, because noone complained about zero security there and wanted them removed... but now we're removing stuff that's still in use on newer devices that are not even at hal their 20, 30, 40year lifespans. I understand the security aspect, I know that telnet is insecure, but I know when, how and why it's insecure and use it accordingly... just add some -use-bad-crypto flag, maybe even make it as a module/plugin, and leave it working as it did.

bigDinosaur 3y ago
I don't see why such a flag is necessary when you can always use an old version of the software instead. That's your flag. Otherwise they would never drop support for anything ever, which seems less than ideal. Something simply existing in the code incurs a maintenance cost.
- adastra22 3y ago
  > Otherwise they would never drop support for anything ever, which seems less than ideal. In the realm of operating systems and protocols, that sounds absolutely ideal. Microsoft has the right approach here.
  - bigDinosaur 3y ago
    In an ideal world where the maintenance cost and added complexity do not matter, yes, but that is not this world and we cannot have everything we want without compromises.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  So how do I install the old version next to the new version in ubuntu 34.04? Will the old version even compile with gcc 27? Or will I have to find some ancient ubuntu image then, run it in a virtualbox, then run wget/curl on a newer virtual machine (becase old wget/curl won't support tls 2.4, and won't be able to download the script and after the command, http-POST the result), then copy the data to an old machine, run old ssh there, get the output, copy it to a new machine, and then http-post it from there? Imagine if every software was coded by this logic... nobody uses BMP images anymore? Just remove them from gimp... if users want BPM support, they'll use gimp 1.x. Security? Unencrypted http is insecure, just remove support for http from firefox/chrome... if users need to use http, they'll just uninstall the current version, backup their profile, install an old version, that doesn't support the lastest tls standards, open that website, copy the text they need from there into notepad, uninstall the old version, install the new version, restore their profile, open gmail and paste the text to an email... oh wait, you've missed something and need to copy some more text... whoops, back to uninstalling.
  - john-shaffer 3y ago
    > So how do I install the old version next to the new version in ubuntu 34.04? You would install Nix and run something similar to "nix run nixpkgs-23.11#openssh <address>"
    - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
      So, what's currently the oldest version of openssh that you can install this way?
      - john-shaffer 3y ago
        export LC_ALL=C nix-shell -I nixpkgs=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/2322899a1fa85f6547004b2829af81e7b444f506.tar.gz -p openssh ssh -V OpenSSH_6.1p1, OpenSSL 1.0.0i 19 Apr 2012 Note that the first stable release of nixpkgs was in 2013.
  - bigDinosaur 3y ago