Nginx gets forked by core developer : opensource

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 49 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Seems like open source can't go a week without drama caused by c-suite lately.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 38 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Seems like corporate greed can't go a week without enshitting on a open source project.

[–] trashxeos@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 2 years ago

You could have ended that sentence with enshitting and still been correct.

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world -4 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Nah, c suite was pretty clearly in the right here. Dude left because he was pissed that a vulnerability got assigned a CVE instead of just... Not informing anyone so they could quietly fix it.

[–] Bene7rddso@feddit.de 5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

It's an experimental feature. It doesn't need a bugfix release because you're not supposed to run it in production, and it's just a DoS, not privilege escalation or something

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Experimental features are explicitly defined as requiring CVEs. You are supposed to run them in production, that's why they're available as expiermental features and not on a development branch somewhere. You're just supposed to run them carefully, and examine what they're doing, so they can move out of experiment into mainline.

And that requires knowledge about any vulnerabilities, hence why it's required to assigned CVEs to experimental features.

And I'm not sure why you think a DoS isn't a vulnerability, that's literally one of the most classic CVEs there are. A DoS is much, much more severe than a DDoS.

[–] Bene7rddso@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

If you do examine what it's doing you will catch this as soon as an attacker exploits it, and can disable it. Also, you should maybe not run the entire production with experimental features enabled. In a stable feature this would absolutely be a CVE, but this is marked experimental because it might not work right or even crash, like here

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Correct, I agree you run it with an eye on it (which you should probably do anyway) instead of firing and forgetting (which, to nginx's credit, is typically stable enough you can do that just fine).

That said, nginx treats experimental as something you explicitly run in production- when they announced they added it into experimental they actually specifically say to run it in prod in an A/B setup.

https://www.nginx.com/blog/our-roadmap-quic-http-3-support-nginx/

[–] Bene7rddso@feddit.de 2 points 2 years ago

If you run large‑scale Internet services,

That means if you're large enough that A can pick up the slack if B shits the bed. The only impact would be that you have to use HTTP2

[+] Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

There is an astounding number of lies in your post, good lord.

It is an issue. A DoS is a fairly serious vulnerability, and very much is a vulnerability.
Experimental features are explicitly defined to require their vulnerabilities to be assigned CVEs.
It is not just available on the stable version, but both commercially and via the open source version.
CVEs are not just for serious issues, they are for vulnerabilities. All vulnerabilities. It is a number that allows you to reference an vulnerability, nothing more, nothing less.
Mentioning a CVE on the mailing list is the absolute least they should be doing.
'workers can just be restarted anyway' shows a deep misunderstanding of what a worker does. Any pending or active transactions that worker had now hangs, meaning that the service is still being denied. Trying to recover automatically from a DoS does not mean the DoS is not happening- it just means that the DoS is slower to get rolling, or intermittently seems to work mid-DoS.

[+] Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de -4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

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[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I'm glad we agree a DoS is a vulnerability.
CVE best practices state that CVEs are required to be assigned to experimental features. F5's company policy is that CVE best practices are followed. F5 is the company that owns nginx. Therefore, it was required. Nice 'legal requirement' strawman. Also, 'Common' in this situation is not defined as 'Widespread; prevalent,' it's defined as 'Of or relating to the community as a whole; public.'
That was a typo regarding 'stable,' my bad. I meant to say 'It is just not available on stable, but is both via commercially and via the open source version.' However, it's still available on commercial versions and open source, and 'non-stable' versions are not inherently unstable, they're just called 'mainline'. Proof: https://nginx.org/en/download.html Stable is basically just 'long term support/LTS' versions of nginx.
Again, you are intentionally misusing the definitions of the word common. Lets see what MITRE has to say about it, hmm?

Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) is a dictionary of common names (i.e., CVE Identifiers) for publicly known information security vulnerabilities. CVE's common identifiers make it easier to share data across separate network security databases and tools, and provide a baseline for evaluating the coverage of an organization's security tools. If a report from one of your security tools incorporates CVE Identifiers, you may then quickly and accurately access fix information in one or more separate CVE-compatible databases to remediate the problem.

Source: https://cve.mitre.org/about/

Yes, I would consider notifying the development mailing list as 'quietly' fixing it, as most all companies using it will not be on the development mailing list. It's meant to be an area for developers to discuss things. They didn't inform the public, they informed the devs.
Where are you getting database from? You've randomly pivoted into talking about database transactions then started babbling about how you somehow think using a production mainline release with production options on a fully supported commercial binary is somehow inherently unsafe, as though it wouldn't still be in dev or test.

Since you seem to have no idea about how web servers work, or indeed, experimental features, I'll let you in on a secret- The only difference between a non-experiemntal option in nginx and an experimental option is that they're unsure if they want that feature in nginx, and are seeing how many people are actually using it/interested in, or they think that usage patterns of the feature might indicate another, better method of implementation. "Experimental" does not mean "unfinished" or "untested."

If you know nothing about programming, CVEs, or even web engines, please stop embarrassing yourself by trying to trumpet ill-thought out bad takes on subjects you don't understand.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml -3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Please don’t complain to us mod/admins about someone making things personal, when you’re the one calling someone a liar and a know-knowing about their field of work.

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Really dude? I never once devolved to name calling, I stated that s/he lied when s/he made false statements. What else am I supposed to say there?

I also don't understand how saying they doesn't know what the subject matter s/he's taking a stance on is 'know-knowing' either? S/He's straight up said they doesn't know what a CVE is, doesn't know what experimental means, and while they claims to be in this field of work, they doesn't know what a web worker is and confused a web transaction with a database transaction.

Sure, I could have been nicer about it when they started escalating, but I never made it personal, and have no intentions of doing so either.

EDIT: realized I was assuming their gender.

[+] BaumGeist@lemmy.ml 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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[+] cybersandwich@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

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[–] fernandofig@reddthat.com 27 points 2 years ago

This sounds like dev sour grapes but what the company was asking them to do seems better from the customer pov and for cyber security I'm general.

As a developer myself (though not on the level of these guys): sorry, but just, no.

The key point is this:

[...] we did not issue CVEs for experimental features and instead would patch the relevant code and release it as part of a standard release.

Emphasis mine. In software, features marked as "experimental" usually are not meant to be used in a production environment, and if they are, it's in a "do it at your own risk" understanding. Software features in an experimental state are expected to be less tested and have bugs - it's essentially a "beta" feature. It has a security bug? Though - you weren't supposed to be using it in a security-sensitive environment in the first place, it sounds perfectly reasonable to me that it should be addressed in a normal release as opposed to an out-of-band one.

We can argue if forking the project is or isn't extreme, but the devs absolutely have good reason to be pissed. This is typical management making decisions without understanding technical nuances and - from what is being told by the devs - not talking it through before doing it.

[+] BaumGeist@lemmy.ml 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (4 children)

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[–] chameleon@kbin.social 7 points 2 years ago

Note: The HTTP/3 QUIC module is not enabled by default and is considered experimental

Do note that despite not being enabled by default, it is enabled in the official binary packages.

There's a funny amount of layers to this thing but as far as I'm concerned, if it's a feature you ship in the default binary packages on your site, that is definitively enough for a CVE even if it's disabled by default.

[–] lorty@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 2 years ago

Doesn't expose information
the service/thread just restarts
Is an experimental feature
that's not enabled by default

Yeah I can definitely see why the devs decided to just fix it on the next patch. Reporting a CVE for this feels very unnecessary.

[–] fernandofig@reddthat.com 4 points 2 years ago

Thank you for digging this out. Turns out it's even worse than what I gleaned from my surface-level take.

[–] NaoPb@eviltoast.org 3 points 2 years ago

Thanks for this. I get now why the devs are pissed.

[+] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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[–] double_oh_walter@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I don’t think f5 is Russian, but Maxim might be?

Also, they did not create nginx, but bought it a while back.

[–] catacomb@beehaw.org 12 points 2 years ago

F5 is American, they just had a Moscow office.

However the creator of nginx, Igor Sysoev, is Russian.

[–] agent_flounder@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

You're not alone in any of that.

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.world 16 points 2 years ago

the CVE thing seems to be a straw that broke the camel's back if anything. it seems a bit fucky to expect a core maintainer to work on your project without pay because you wanted to look virtuous by firing them during the initial invasion of Ukraine.

I'm sure if they, yaknow, paid him, the corporate procedures he was still bound to wouldn't be so bad.

doubt freegnix will get far, mind you, but I don't think it's entirely fair to call his reaction "sour grapes"

[–] synae@lemmy.sdf.org 14 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Stuff like this is a great reminder about the power of Open Source. Even if it's inconvenient for the downstream user(/admin/etc), it contributes to strengthening software as a whole

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 21 points 2 years ago (1 children)

user(/admin/etc)

/etc/{admin,user}

FTFY

[–] synae@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 2 years ago

Lol, thanks

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 years ago

Haha... It actually makes sense that something complex like nginx is created by some genius russian guy.

[+] jeansibelius@lemmy.world -5 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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[–] denast@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Yeah fuck 'em ruskies, amirite? Gotta be so dumb to choose the wrong nationality at birth, jeansibelius didn't make that mistake, look at him go! 😎😎😎

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