On 2016-02-18 02:26:28, Guido Günther wrote: > Hi, > On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 01:39:41PM -0500, Antoine Beaupré wrote: >> On 2016-02-17 12:13:35, Guido Günther wrote: >> > When triaging LTS issues I always have to look up what we still support >> > and what not. Attached script simplifies this a bit: >> > >> > $ bin/support-ended.py --lists /path/to/debian-security-support/ iceape >> > Package unsupported in wheezy >> > Package unsupported in squeeze >> > >> > Does this make sense? It would be great if we could later add this to >> > the scripts mangling data/CVE/list to add the <end-of-life> entries >> > automatically. What would be the right place for that? >> > >> > I didn't find a place in Debian where we canonically map release names >> > to release numbers (i.e. squeeze -> 6.x, jessie -> 7.x). I'm sure there >> > is such a thing so I'm happy about any pointers. >> >> Good idea, couldn't this be integrated in find-work? > > Either that one or in lts-cve-triage so we can mark them upfront when > triaging bugs. > > Carnil pointed out that he does not just mark packages as <end-of-life> > but rather checks beforehand if the vulnerable code is present at all > and marks them as <not-affected> if not even if the package is > unsupported. This gives a lower bound on the affected versions. I wonder > if we should adopt the same practice to ease the work of the security > team a bit? At least in cases where it's rather simple to check. So for > packages unsupported in the LTS release > > <end-of-life>: not supported but vulnerability likely present > <not-affected>: vulnerable code not present
The problem here is that LTS is so old that it is sometimes very difficult to figure out if a vulnerability is present. Upstream and the CVE material most likely do *not* even *know* if older versions are vulnerable... So it's great to check, but sometimes it takes a long time, and I am not sure it is worth spending that time on a unsupported package. So i think it should rather be: <end-of-life>: not supported but vulnerability possibly present <not-affected>: vulnerable code not present ie. on unsupported packages, we *can* mark an issue non-affected if we have reasons to believe it is not, but if it's too complicated to check, end-of-life is also fine, and does *not* mean there is necessarily a vulnerability. a. -- You Are What You Is - Frank Zappa