Re: ftp was hacked

From: Wine Development (wine@sweeney.demon.co.uk)
Date: 01/03/02 

From: Wine Development <wine@sweeney.demon.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 09:11:43 +0000

Tim Haynes wrote:
>
> Wine Development <wine@sweeney.demon.co.uk> writes:
>
> > John Thompson wrote:
> > >
> > > In article <3C2E983E.F1141061@yahoo.com>, Ed Turner wrote:
> > >
> > > > There was an advisory on WU-FTPd. The program has a serious flaw.
> > >
> > > Which was quickly fixed.
> >
> > Very true, but there is a maxim among quality specialists which reads
> > 'The greater the number of bugs found to date the greater the likelihood
> > of there being more still to be found' .
> >
> > This applies to all software products, not just those issuing forth from
> > Redmond.
>
> Yes. We've encountered it here before over "is qmail secure?" and "just run
> djbdns instead" and suchlike. It all depends on how much you consider past
> performance to be an indicator of the future.
>

I think the crucial matter is - was it patched or rewritten. If
patching was the 'fix' the the past history is probably a fairly good
guide. Only after a couple of years of heavy and widespread use
without problems can one really say the nasties have probably gone
away - look at the history of IIS with bugs suddenly being discovered
that go back 2 or 3 releases.

A rewrite (a la Bind8/Bind9) is a different matter, especially if done
by a different designer+coder combination. Here we have a disjoint,
and while the new product may turn out to be worse from a security
point of view the problem history will certainly be different and only
time will resolve.

I have never subscribed to the 'latest has got to be best' theory,
things are never that simple, MS (in their usual style in such
matters) have amply demonstrated that as well. 

-- 
Keith Matthews 			Spam trap - my real account at this 
							node is keith_m

Frequentous Consultants  - Linux Services, 
		Oracle development & database administration

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