A Flood of Stable Linux Kernels Released

Julie188 writes "Greg Kroah-Hartman has released five new stable Linux kernels, correcting minor errors of their predecessors and including improvements which are unlikely to generate new errors. As so often with kernel versions in the stable series, it remains undisclosed if the new versions contain changes which fix security vulnerabilities, although the number of changes and some of the descriptions of those changes certainly suggest that all the new versions contain security fixes."

Comments

Re:unknown?

[Aboroth]

Since each kernel comes with a complete changelog, it is only "unknown" to people who aren't capable of reading it. It has always been the responsibility of those who build kernels to pay attention to this. I don't recall there ever being a special designation on the front page of kernel.org to designate kernels that fix security vulnerabilities. If you go through a vendor I'm sure they keep up on this or they are incompetent. If you patch your own kernels then you should pay attention to the changelogs. As always.

Yay for sensationalist writing.

Re:unknown?

[Enderandrew]

This has been the policy of the Linux kernel for ages.

They don't go out of their way to hide security fixes, but they don't advertise them either. All bugs are treated as bugs. You can read the lengthy changelog.

Linus doesn't believe in calling special attention to closed bugs, because it also alerts people that there are unpatched security holes in earlier versions. Some shops don't patch Linux boxes regularly.

fixes are fully disclosed, stop fud'ing

[bl8n8r]

The disclosures aren't in a pretty clicky-clicky-box but the kernel devs *do* strive to maintain formats which cater to the major users:

for shell ninjas:
    wget www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.33 -O - | less

for geezers/people with lawns:
    telnet ftp.kernel.org 21

for the lamer++:
    http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/ChangeLog-2.6.33