Peter Simons wrote:
Miguel Filipe writes:

 > I came "sounding like an ass"? Why is that?

Because you criticized the Gentoo project. It works like
this: You bring up a security problem. In the replies you
get, though, your actual point is flat out dismissed or
never addressed at all. Instead, you and your behavior will
be discussed in a very provoking manner. Once you have been
thoroughly annoyed and insulted, you become defensive and
lose focus of what you were trying to say in the first
place! Thus, the discussion drifts away from the security
problem.

Peter, please don't start your rant again.

 > Because I talked about a LOCAL ROOT EXPLOIT ..that isn't
 > mentioned in the GENTOO SECURITY ML because its in the
 > bugs repository?

The advantage of dealing with security problems _only_ in
the bug tracking system is that practically nobody follows
the bug tracking system -- whereas lots of people read the
mailing list. Thus, there is less transparency, which means
more freedom for the Gentoo core team to deal with security
problems in a way that doesn't interfere with internal
politics (read: egos).

The reason you haven't seen an email about it is because security advisories get sent to gentoo-announce. It was decided a few years ago to move those emails from here to there because there were a lot more people on that list. The other reason you haven't seen any email about this from us is because we go through a process to make sure all the ebuilds are updated before we release an announcement (which is documented on our site [1] ). Its not being ignored one bit, its just not very visible unless you follow bugs.


 > If issues like a LOCAL ROOT EXPLOIT aren't mentioned
 > here, WHY THE HELL does this ML exist?

As it happens, I have a concrete proposal how to make this
list more useful! How about having the bug tracking system
forward all new security-related entries to this mailing
list automatically? This policy would (a) increase
transparency and (b) help finding volunteers from the
community who care enough about a problem to be willing to
dedicate time to fixing it. Thus: less work for the Gentoo
core team, more security for everybody.

Add a watch on the bugs site like was previously mentioned. Perhaps that should be better documented so people like him can follow things like that.


 > Where is explained that those who want to follow security
 > issues that may affect thier systems should track
 > bugs.gentoo.org?

I'd very much like to see an answer to this question. The
page <http://security.gentoo.org/> doesn't seem to say
anything about.

See above. If this needs to be added, make a bug about it.

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/security/en/vulnerability-policy.xml

-Lance


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