alt Hacker NewsI find it curious to call someone dropping a weaponized root exploit before major distros or even LTS kernel git branches have patches ready "good guys". This could have been handled with much more grace.
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tptacek • yesterday at 11:04 PM
Again: I made the actual distinction between bad guys and good guys clear. Good guys don't become bad guys simply because kernel security is an inconvenience to you.
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To be fair, once Xint gave the heads up and the kernel team committed a patch, what was Xint supposed to do? Keep asking the kernel security team to backport patches for the LTS kernels?
As soon as a patch is committed, the clock starts ticking, the exploit will be discovered by reverse engineering recent commits. The commit was made on April 1st, Xint disclosed it on the 29th. If the Kernel Security team had wanted to, they had 28 days to backport patches in the LTS branches...
So, I wouldn't put any blame on Xint there.