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> This attitude is why operating systems have ossified. Every new feature is suspect. io_uring? TURN IT OFF. User namespaces? TURN IT OFF. eBPF? TURN IT OFF. Th

• quotemstr 2y ago
  The superstition lasts a lot longer than the vulnerabilities do.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    Yes, obviously; a feature with a history of vulnerabilities is likely to have more that have not yet been found and patched. It's a guess, but in the but in the face of unknown unknowns it's rational.
    • quotemstr 2y ago
      You know, I'm still unsure about this "thread" concept some programs use. It's kind of insane for ONE program to do TWO THINGS at the SAME TIME. I think it can lead to security problems. Please add a sysctl knob letting me turn off this dangerous technology until we fix all the problems with it.
      • yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
        First: That's a strawman. Nobody's saying we can't ever use new features, just that it's reasonable to be cautious with new code that demonstrably has a history of problems. When io_uring has a few decades under its belt I expect its use to be uncontroversial. Second: That's... not a terrible idea. Concurrency bugs do crop up from time to time. I wouldn't use it for everything (again, we're in the very long tail of concurrency bugs), but having a way to force the system into a mode that couldn't hit them would be nice for high-stakes situations (the same way that Apple's Lockdown Mode disables JIT in the browser). Unfortunately it would probably be more involved than a sysctl.