Slashdot Mirror
Critical Security Hole in Linux Wi-Fi
thisispurefud writes "A flaw has been found in a major Linux Wi-Fi driver that can allow an attacker to run malicious code and take control of a laptop, even when it is not on a Wi-Fi network."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Um, "Joe Linux" here, chiming in. I run Fedora, which was pre-installed on oddball hardware. If Fedora has automatic updates like Ubuntu, and if they just work, I sure as hell haven't heard about them. The Fedora repository is about 10% of the way to useful. 15%, when I'm feeling charitable. I'm on Core 3 because I haven't found a distro that can deal with my system, and, since I'm a biology geek not a computer geek, I have no idea what to do or the time to spend finding out.
It gets worse. I don't even know if I'm running a madwifi driver or not. I looked at the running processes, but there's nothing obvious there. I don't know if madwifi is called something else in the process list. I do know I have a Atheros chip.
The point I'm trying to make is more than just displaying ignorance. The point is that it may be hard for those of you who are close to the subject to realize just how opaque it is to those of us who aren't. If you're in the know, share their knowledge. It's kind of frustrating, from my perspective, to hear, "It's all automatic, and if it's not, you're just too hopeless to deal with."
(All that said, you're quite right that when updates are applied automatically and effectively, both the clueless and the clued benefit. That's why I'm getting my next system with Ubuntu on it!)