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by SahAssar 218 days ago
All my questions where with the assumption of a country-level government. I asked why, if this is so cheap, common and easy we do not see it used more.

Even if we said that we restrict it to for example the G20 I still don't think they can easily and cheaply "RCE any OS".

2 comments

We do see it! Do you not remember the Snowden leaks?

Shit hasn't changed much. We still have monolithic kernels written in portable assembly. Linus still doesn't tag bug fixes with potential security impacts as such because he is more worried about unpatched consumer garbage (which compromise all low end phones). When your mitigation for such problems is to not make it obvious, then your OS is not safe enough in safety critical settings (which includes consumer devices).

Process isolation would downgrade the vast majority of critical Linux CVEs to availability bugs (crash a server but not compromise it).

Just because governments don't need to reach for RCE everytime doesn't mean that it is safe. Th fact that such bugs are so cheap is an indication that your safety margin is too thin.

“I don’t get told, it isn’t happening/possible.”

Hopefully this helps as succinctly as possible. Genuinely.