4 ms·

That's a bit shameless, indeed. dnsmasq has served me well for like an eternity in multiple setups for different use cases. As all software it has bugs. And on

That's a bit shameless, indeed. dnsmasq has served me well for like an eternity in multiple setups for different use cases. As all software it has bugs. And once located those get fixed. Its author is also easy to communicate with. Why should I switch over to something way less proven? I'm quite sure your software also has bugs, many still not located. Maybe because it's less popular/ less well known nobody cares to hunt for those bugs? Which means even if the numbers of found bugs is less in your software at the moment, and it may look more audited for this reason, it may actually be way less secure.

rgkpz 5mo ago
"All software has bugs" is the most meaningless statement ever. It is just used for bonding with fellow bug writers who sit at a virtual campfire and muse about inevitabilities. Demonstrably some software has fewer bugs, and its authors are often hated, especially if they are a lone author like Bernstein. Because it must not happen! Projects with useless churn and many bug reports are more popular because only activity matters, not quality.
- zamadatix 5mo ago
  "All software has bugs" so "be wary of the one trying to say they haven't had any in 3 years" not so "I guess all are equal". For extremely low security bug rates either the scope is extremely narrow, the claim is dubious, or the project is a massive effort which the community talks about directly in posts rather than plugs (e.g. curl).
  - strenholme 5mo ago
    DJB, with Qmail and DjbDNS (as well as Publicfile, which didn’t catch on in an era of CGI scripts), showed that one could have (mostly) security bug free software without the scope being “extremely narrow”, and without the claim being “dubious”. It’s not normal for software to be so poorly written, one doubts the claim that a security bug hasn’t been found in over three years. If one thinks the claim of no security bugs of consequence in three years is dubious, feel free to do a security audit of MaraDNS (or DjbDNS, which I also will take responsibility for even though my software is, if you will, a “competitor” to DjbDNS), and report any bugs you find. Speaking of DJB, DjbDNS has had a few security bugs over the years (but not that many), but I’m maintaining a fork of DjbDNS with all of the security bugs I know about fixed: https://github.com/samboy/ndjbdns https://github.com/samboy/ndjbdns I am saying all this as someone who has had significant enough issues with DJB’s software, I ended up writing my own DNS server so I didn’t have to use his server (I might not had done so if DjbDNS was public domain in 2001, but oh well). (As a matter of etiquette, it’s a little rude to claim someone is saying something “dubious”, especially when the claim is backed up with solid evidence [multiple audits didn’t find anything of significance in the last year, as I documented above], unless you have solid evidence the claim is dubious, e.g. a significant security hole more recent than three years old)
    - fc417fc802 5mo ago
      > It’s not normal for software to be so poorly written, one doubts the claim that a security bug hasn’t been found in over three years. Can you back that claim up with at least some sort of theory? Because it doesn't match my perception of the real world, nor does it match my mental model of how CVEs happen.
      - strenholme 5mo ago
        Yes, I can. https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/DNS.security.comparison.txt https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/DNS.security.compar... Also, my sister post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112042
        fc417fc802 5mo ago
        Is that not begging the question? You have asserted X and now you point to a particular track record to back the claim of X up but the track record only serves as valid evidence of X if we already accept your assertion that X is the case.
    - 3ASAF 5mo ago
      People here don't know that MaraDNS was already popular on extremely critical security mailing lists that basically hated anything but qmail and postfix. If you introduce more bugs and blog about them, it will probably gain in popularity. :)
    - zamadatix 5mo ago
      I never used Qmail, so I won't comment on it, but I will say I absolutely consider djbdns narrow in scope as well (before accounting the Unix approach, utilized perhaps even more than in MaraDNS, to break that already narrowed scope down into even more focused binaries). I had believed (and continue to hold) DNS software containing, e.g., an authoritative DNS server which lacks native TCP or DNSSEC support falls squarely into the "narrowly scoped" bucket and would appreciate if you'd not try to decide my opinion for me on any given project in the future.
- shermantanktop 5mo ago
  “Fellow bug writers” is everyone. People who write fewer bugs exist, and a lone few who write many fewer. I haven’t noticed antipathy, but I have noticed skepticism. I assume people with outlier records in any field get some extra inspection. If it becomes jealousy-fueled not-picking, those people are insecure jerks. But unusual track records are worth understanding.
- dc396 5mo ago
  If DJB is "hated", it isn't because he's a lone author (Linus Torvalds was once a lone author and I don't think he was hated). It's because he can be an asshole. To quote George Bernard Shaw, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
  - strenholme 5mo ago
    DJB is a lot of things, and I have great respect for him, even though I feel he didn’t responsibly maintain Qmail/DJBdns/Publicfile. He made MaraDNS more secure because I carefully read his documentation—I got the idea to have a random source port to give MaraDNS more security from him, which means MaraDNS was unscathed when DNS spoofing was independently discovered in 2007. The point DJB made was this: It was possible for a skilled C programmer to make a server with few security holes. Even though that’s not as relevant now, with Rust having most of the speed of C and security built in, it did make the Internet a safer place for many years. I remember using Qmail and DJBdns to make the servers at the small company I worked for at the time more secure.
- zx8080 5mo ago
  > "All software has bugs" is the most meaningless statement ever. It's not! It's the foundation of all dev AI products marketing.
- vasco 5mo ago
  > Demonstrably some software has fewer bugs You literally write fewer instead of none, therefore agreeing with the sentence you claimed to say is meaningless.
daneel_w 5mo ago
> Why should I switch over to something way less proven? Must they prove their software to you? They're offering an alternative, not bargaining for a deal.
- fc417fc802 5mo ago
  When you offer up an alternative as technically superior in some manner then yes, it is on you to demonstrate such a claim in a convincing manner. "No bugs in 3 years in this software with a much smaller audience and also look AI audits!" comes across as off topic shameless self promotion. At least if an insightful technical discussion ensued the subthread might prove worthwhile but so far it's just the usual tired shit flinging.
  - strenholme 5mo ago
    I have far more evidence of a very good security record with MaraDNS than “No bugs in 3 years in this software with a much smaller audience and also look AI audits!” • The software has been around for 25 years • The software is popular enough to have been subjected to dozens of security code audits, including two audits in the post-AI era • In those 25 years, only two remote “packet of death” bugs have been found • Also, in those same 25 years, only one single bug report of remotely exploitable memory leaks has been found This isn’t something which, as implied here, has a lot of security bugs only because no one has used or audited the software. This is a long term, mature code base which has only had a few serious security bugs in that timeframe. Here is my evidence: https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/security.html https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/security.html If this evidence isn’t “convincing” to you, I don’t know what evidence would be “convincing”.
    - fc417fc802 5mo ago
      For what it's worth I didn't know about maradns prior to this. Maybe it actually sees fairly wide use? Whether or not I accept your evidence would hinge on that. Regardless I think my point stands - if you don't lead with a convincing line of reasoning all that's left is an empty assertion. Unless I happen to recognize you as an authority in the field that's not going to do anything for me since by default you're some stranger on the internet that might be a dog for all I know. To illustrate the issue with an extreme example, consider that a disused repository on github full of security holes is highly unlikely to have any CVEs regardless of age. The software has to present a worthwhile target (ie have a substantial long term userbase) before anyone will bother to look for exploits. (I guess that might change in the near future thanks to AI but I don't think we're there just yet.)
BrandoElFollito 5mo ago
> dnsmasq has served me well for like an eternity in multiple setups for different use cases. As all software it has bugs. And once located those get fixed. Its author is also easy to communicate with. I concur. The last part, however, is quite worrisome. Dnsmasq is ran by one person, published on their own git and I did not see any information about other maintainers. It is a super important (and great, and useful, and everything) software and i have fears of what will happen one day. Sure, someone can clone and push to github but it may seriously fragment the ecosystem.
- binaryturtle 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - BrandoElFollito 5mo ago
    My point was not in the one-person aspect (I use fantastic software done by one person, I also develop some (used by a niche)), it is the bus factor that is worrisome. Some projects die because the dev abandons them (slowly or abruptly). Usually you see this happening with time and have the time to turn around. The bus factor is drastic. One day the project lives and the next day it is gone. There is nobody anymore to push PRs etc. As I said, you can have it picked up via a fork and hope for the best (= that current users will somehow know). havng a backup contibutor eevn just to make the transition is a nice thing to have. > Seeing it here, how someone "shamelessly" (in their own words) adverts their own competing project and then uses dummy accounts to bend the voting and discussion in their favouring… that's definitely NOT how trust is build up. It's something which instantly makes me stay away from a project (better or not). Not sure how this relates to my comment?
  - strenholme 5mo ago
    >>>uses dummy accounts to bend the voting and discussion<<< This is a false accusation with no evidence to back it up. Let me state this clearly: I am not using sockpuppet accounts nor am I stacking the vote. Ycombinator is a secure site and @dang does not allow sockpuppets nor stacked voting. What you are seeing is the hacker spirit of the Ycombinator community: Hackers believe in software diversity, and strongly oppose monoculture, so welcome people who bring up and discuss alternative software.

rgkpz 5mo ago

"All software has bugs" is the most meaningless statement ever. It is just used for bonding with fellow bug writers who sit at a virtual campfire and muse about inevitabilities. Demonstrably some software has fewer bugs, and its authors are often hated, especially if they are a lone author like Bernstein. Because it must not happen! Projects with useless churn and many bug reports are more popular because only activity matters, not quality.

zamadatix 5mo ago
"All software has bugs" so "be wary of the one trying to say they haven't had any in 3 years" not so "I guess all are equal". For extremely low security bug rates either the scope is extremely narrow, the claim is dubious, or the project is a massive effort which the community talks about directly in posts rather than plugs (e.g. curl).
- strenholme 5mo ago
  DJB, with Qmail and DjbDNS (as well as Publicfile, which didn’t catch on in an era of CGI scripts), showed that one could have (mostly) security bug free software without the scope being “extremely narrow”, and without the claim being “dubious”. It’s not normal for software to be so poorly written, one doubts the claim that a security bug hasn’t been found in over three years. If one thinks the claim of no security bugs of consequence in three years is dubious, feel free to do a security audit of MaraDNS (or DjbDNS, which I also will take responsibility for even though my software is, if you will, a “competitor” to DjbDNS), and report any bugs you find. Speaking of DJB, DjbDNS has had a few security bugs over the years (but not that many), but I’m maintaining a fork of DjbDNS with all of the security bugs I know about fixed: https://github.com/samboy/ndjbdns https://github.com/samboy/ndjbdns I am saying all this as someone who has had significant enough issues with DJB’s software, I ended up writing my own DNS server so I didn’t have to use his server (I might not had done so if DjbDNS was public domain in 2001, but oh well). (As a matter of etiquette, it’s a little rude to claim someone is saying something “dubious”, especially when the claim is backed up with solid evidence [multiple audits didn’t find anything of significance in the last year, as I documented above], unless you have solid evidence the claim is dubious, e.g. a significant security hole more recent than three years old)
  - fc417fc802 5mo ago
    > It’s not normal for software to be so poorly written, one doubts the claim that a security bug hasn’t been found in over three years. Can you back that claim up with at least some sort of theory? Because it doesn't match my perception of the real world, nor does it match my mental model of how CVEs happen.
    - strenholme 5mo ago
      Yes, I can. https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/DNS.security.comparison.txt https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/DNS.security.compar... Also, my sister post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112042
      - fc417fc802 5mo ago
        Is that not begging the question? You have asserted X and now you point to a particular track record to back the claim of X up but the track record only serves as valid evidence of X if we already accept your assertion that X is the case.
  - 3ASAF 5mo ago
    People here don't know that MaraDNS was already popular on extremely critical security mailing lists that basically hated anything but qmail and postfix. If you introduce more bugs and blog about them, it will probably gain in popularity. :)
  - zamadatix 5mo ago
    I never used Qmail, so I won't comment on it, but I will say I absolutely consider djbdns narrow in scope as well (before accounting the Unix approach, utilized perhaps even more than in MaraDNS, to break that already narrowed scope down into even more focused binaries). I had believed (and continue to hold) DNS software containing, e.g., an authoritative DNS server which lacks native TCP or DNSSEC support falls squarely into the "narrowly scoped" bucket and would appreciate if you'd not try to decide my opinion for me on any given project in the future.
shermantanktop 5mo ago
“Fellow bug writers” is everyone. People who write fewer bugs exist, and a lone few who write many fewer. I haven’t noticed antipathy, but I have noticed skepticism. I assume people with outlier records in any field get some extra inspection. If it becomes jealousy-fueled not-picking, those people are insecure jerks. But unusual track records are worth understanding.
dc396 5mo ago
If DJB is "hated", it isn't because he's a lone author (Linus Torvalds was once a lone author and I don't think he was hated). It's because he can be an asshole. To quote George Bernard Shaw, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
- strenholme 5mo ago
  DJB is a lot of things, and I have great respect for him, even though I feel he didn’t responsibly maintain Qmail/DJBdns/Publicfile. He made MaraDNS more secure because I carefully read his documentation—I got the idea to have a random source port to give MaraDNS more security from him, which means MaraDNS was unscathed when DNS spoofing was independently discovered in 2007. The point DJB made was this: It was possible for a skilled C programmer to make a server with few security holes. Even though that’s not as relevant now, with Rust having most of the speed of C and security built in, it did make the Internet a safer place for many years. I remember using Qmail and DJBdns to make the servers at the small company I worked for at the time more secure.
zx8080 5mo ago
> "All software has bugs" is the most meaningless statement ever. It's not! It's the foundation of all dev AI products marketing.
vasco 5mo ago
> Demonstrably some software has fewer bugs You literally write fewer instead of none, therefore agreeing with the sentence you claimed to say is meaningless.

daneel_w 5mo ago

> Why should I switch over to something way less proven? Must they prove their software to you? They're offering an alternative, not bargaining for a deal.

fc417fc802 5mo ago
When you offer up an alternative as technically superior in some manner then yes, it is on you to demonstrate such a claim in a convincing manner. "No bugs in 3 years in this software with a much smaller audience and also look AI audits!" comes across as off topic shameless self promotion. At least if an insightful technical discussion ensued the subthread might prove worthwhile but so far it's just the usual tired shit flinging.
- strenholme 5mo ago
  I have far more evidence of a very good security record with MaraDNS than “No bugs in 3 years in this software with a much smaller audience and also look AI audits!” • The software has been around for 25 years • The software is popular enough to have been subjected to dozens of security code audits, including two audits in the post-AI era • In those 25 years, only two remote “packet of death” bugs have been found • Also, in those same 25 years, only one single bug report of remotely exploitable memory leaks has been found This isn’t something which, as implied here, has a lot of security bugs only because no one has used or audited the software. This is a long term, mature code base which has only had a few serious security bugs in that timeframe. Here is my evidence: https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/security.html https://samboy.github.io/MaraDNS/webpage/security.html If this evidence isn’t “convincing” to you, I don’t know what evidence would be “convincing”.
  - fc417fc802 5mo ago
    For what it's worth I didn't know about maradns prior to this. Maybe it actually sees fairly wide use? Whether or not I accept your evidence would hinge on that. Regardless I think my point stands - if you don't lead with a convincing line of reasoning all that's left is an empty assertion. Unless I happen to recognize you as an authority in the field that's not going to do anything for me since by default you're some stranger on the internet that might be a dog for all I know. To illustrate the issue with an extreme example, consider that a disused repository on github full of security holes is highly unlikely to have any CVEs regardless of age. The software has to present a worthwhile target (ie have a substantial long term userbase) before anyone will bother to look for exploits. (I guess that might change in the near future thanks to AI but I don't think we're there just yet.)

BrandoElFollito 5mo ago

> dnsmasq has served me well for like an eternity in multiple setups for different use cases. As all software it has bugs. And once located those get fixed. Its author is also easy to communicate with. I concur. The last part, however, is quite worrisome. Dnsmasq is ran by one person, published on their own git and I did not see any information about other maintainers. It is a super important (and great, and useful, and everything) software and i have fears of what will happen one day. Sure, someone can clone and push to github but it may seriously fragment the ecosystem.

binaryturtle 5mo ago
[flagged]
- BrandoElFollito 5mo ago
  My point was not in the one-person aspect (I use fantastic software done by one person, I also develop some (used by a niche)), it is the bus factor that is worrisome. Some projects die because the dev abandons them (slowly or abruptly). Usually you see this happening with time and have the time to turn around. The bus factor is drastic. One day the project lives and the next day it is gone. There is nobody anymore to push PRs etc. As I said, you can have it picked up via a fork and hope for the best (= that current users will somehow know). havng a backup contibutor eevn just to make the transition is a nice thing to have. > Seeing it here, how someone "shamelessly" (in their own words) adverts their own competing project and then uses dummy accounts to bend the voting and discussion in their favouring… that's definitely NOT how trust is build up. It's something which instantly makes me stay away from a project (better or not). Not sure how this relates to my comment?
- strenholme 5mo ago
  >>>uses dummy accounts to bend the voting and discussion<<< This is a false accusation with no evidence to back it up. Let me state this clearly: I am not using sockpuppet accounts nor am I stacking the vote. Ycombinator is a secure site and @dang does not allow sockpuppets nor stacked voting. What you are seeing is the hacker spirit of the Ycombinator community: Hackers believe in software diversity, and strongly oppose monoculture, so welcome people who bring up and discuss alternative software.