Vulnerability Discovered In Latest Ubuntu Distributions, Users Advised To Update (ubuntu.com)

Celarent Darii writes: There is a vulnerability in the latest ubuntu distributions due to the DNS resolver included in systemd. The inclusion of the dns resolver was lamented by many on the mailing list, not without cause. All are advised to update their distribution.

Comments

I'm amazed!

[Vlijmen Fileer]

No kidding. Do all of you folks see my amazed look? :/
B.t.w. does anybody know if systemd already ships its own OS?

Re:I'm amazed!

[Type44Q]

SystemD's OS is the Intel Management Engine.

Poettering strikes again

[guruevi]

I think systemd is a Microsoft plant. It's basically INI files for Linux. Next week he'll upgrade us all to a 'central registry' and you'll need a GUI to edit it.

Re:Poettering strikes again

[F.Ultra]

Some are yes, other are complex turing complete and others follow the INI style. Look i.e at /etc/openal/alsoft.conf, /etc/subversion/config, /etc/couchdb/local.ini, or why not any of the .desktop files in /usr/share/applications/.

INI style are not bad just because MS happened to use them a lot in MS-DOS, AFAIK there isn't even anything that points to MS being the inventors of the format, just that they used them system until they came up with their horrid registry.

Dare I say it?

[DontBeAMoran]

Here goes: systemd, the cause of all modern Linux problems.

systemd is completely backward in how unix systems are built. You're supposed to have tiny programs do one job and do it well. systemd is a huge monolith that's assimilating everything on its path.

Wait, why does that sound familiar?

Anyone know if the authors of systemd are getting paid by Microsoft, by any chance?

Re:Dare I say it?

[Kjella]

I'm not saying that systemd is the answer, but... the old init system worked great if all you ever needed was an init system. That is to say your machine got everything plugged in on boot, always on a wired network and always on AC. The only thing you need the init system for was to get you from cold hardware to a running state, then it could declare "my work here is done" and go into retirement until it was time for shutdown. For some people that's all they need, good for you. Anything dynamic has been a mess. Suspend/resume/hibernate, hot-plugging/unplugging, wired/wireless, connected/not connected to network, AC/battery, power management, docked/undocked, switchable graphics, the list goes on and on.

The track record is not much better when it comes to shared resources like window managers, composited desktops, sound cards etc. that need some kind of mediator like a compositor or sound server. You can of course say that every application should solve this on their own, but the truth is that we know they don't and there's a huge patchwork of solutions that try to make applications play nice, often competing so this application will only work with that system-level service. I can understand that you don't want to support two init systems (SysV, systemd), four sound servers (PulseAudio, ALSA, Jack, OSS), two window managers (X11, Wayland) and so on.

For this you want a modern POSIX, call it an "application execution environment" if you will. A running mediator between the applications and their surroundings, not just at boot but as long as the machine has power. Maybe this could be solved by a hundred small services of various kinds or at least that's its a better solution than one gigantic mess. But to pretend it's all working great is something of an exaggeration, to say the least.

Re:Dare I say it?

[chihowa]

The problem with systemd is the half-assed assimilation of more and more system functions.

• Why does systemd even have its own DNS resolver?
• How many people are working on it and reviewing the code for security issues?
• Why was the whole thing rewritten from scratch instead of just writing a shim for the previously used, reviewed, secure resolvers that exist?

It's not just DNS resolvers, either. I've had issues with systemd's own (very incomplete) SNTP client, which is used instead of more mature and robust clients. Why do they keep reinventing the wheel in such a sloppy way?

Please, do not use systemd

[what about]

Switch to slackware, devuan, gentoo...

After all Linux is still a few percentage of desktop, no need to install Debian derivative
We are competent admin, are we not ?

Yes, it is painful to see such a great distro being overtaken by such a crap software.

Live long and prosper

Re:what a horrible dns resolver

[aardvarkjoe]

What problem do the systemd guys think that they're solving by adding a half-assed dns resolver to systemd? Is it just because they can't stand to have any software that's not under their direct control?

Re:For those keeping track...

[Gravis Zero]

That graph is the infant graph of every project

Sure... except that systemd has been around for seven years. It's not maturing because it's always expanding.

They need help.

I agree, they are rudderless boat that runs into other projects and absorbs them. What they need is vision but the project leaders are blind mice in a maze with no finish line. I cannot help them because they will not accept one of their ideas being rejected.

What are YOU doing to help them? There's 617 things you could be working on.

I've been writing a properly designed replacement to dislodge systemd. It's portable, superior but most importantly it follows the UNIX design philosophy. However, I will not be an enabler of those who work on systemd by cleaning up their messes for the next 30 years.

Open source software is evolutionary and systemd too will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Yes, News!

[thesupraman]

The news is clear, Shill.

The news here is that systemd, in its usual 'we know better than anyone, even though we have very very little experience' way replaced perfectly functional systems for the most dubious of reasons (usually 'because we want to make them different, and cannot even be bothered raising our reasons with maintainers of existing solutions because then we may need to rationalise what we want'), and went away and implemented a system broken in a way SO foolish that the existing solutions have addressed exactly these issues decades ago.
Not to mention the fact that they have worked hard to try and make it unavoidable that ALL linux solutions will end up with the problems caused by their basic ignorance by making systemd basically indespensible.

Clear enough? Or perhaps you think a trivially exploitable and almost indefensible DNS bug, along with a file system wiping bug (the good old rm ../...) are just minor bumps on the road to nirvana?

Of course the clear and obvious REASON for systemd is a power grab by RedHat to give them control of the Linux 'standard'. It is unfortunate that they cannot see past their own grab at power to see how damaging such an approach is to the robustness of Linux itself -they must turn away, stick their fingers in their ears, and sing 'la la la la, wont happen to us, la la la la' loudly to themselves each time a big windows exploit drops these days.. Because that is the endpoint of the path they are following.