Discussion:
Bug#949160: netbase: removal of isakmp/udp has some bad effects
(too old to reply)
Christoph Anton Mitterer
2020-01-17 15:10:02 UTC
Permalink
Package: netbase
Version: 6.0
Severity: important


Hi.

Recently, isakmp was removed for udp from /etc/services.

First, this should be added back, as it's perfectly fine to be used on UDP (see rfc2408).
IIRC UDP was actually *the* transport protocol on which it's used (TCP is only breifly
mentioned in the standard).

It's rather the TCP version which should be removed (but this should be thoroughly checked
first).


This however points to another serious problem with simply removing entries from services.
People may actually use these and since they likely don't read the changelog and there is
no NEWS.Debian which would mention it (and which one can users expect to read) pretty bad
things can happen.

In my case I used it in iptables rules files, so either
- the rules are (rather silently) not loaded and thus system security could easily be
compromised completely (since the default Debian boots anyway even if e.g.
netfilter-persistent fails to load rules
- or on my case, where I've tightened the unit files for netfilter-persistend a bit (i.e.
making it a hard RequiredBy=sysinit.target network-pre.target network.target
it causes the system to hang at boot,.. which is stil better than a security compromise
but still not so good ;-)


Not sure what's best to do, cause obviously it makes sense to keep services cleaned up.
Maybe you should add NEWS.Debian entries each time you remove something.


Cheers,
Chris.
Marco d'Itri
2020-01-19 12:40:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Christoph Anton Mitterer
It's rather the TCP version which should be removed (but this should be thoroughly checked
Indeed, this was my mistake.
Post by Christoph Anton Mitterer
People may actually use these and since they likely don't read the changelog and there is
no NEWS.Debian which would mention it (and which one can users expect to read) pretty bad
things can happen.
Then they will open a bug and I will fix it. No big deal, we call this
"unstable" for a reason.
--
ciao,
Marco
Christoph Anton Mitterer
2020-01-20 18:00:01 UTC
Permalink
Post by Marco d'Itri
Then they will open a bug and I will fix it. No big deal, we call
this "unstable" for a reason.
I don't think this changes anything, does it?
/etc/services is there with the intention to be used, thus there is
always the chance that some legacy entry is removed which is however
used by some people (who may just not notice it as they don't use
testing/unstable, but will be hit, once they upgrade to the next
stable).


Best wishes,
Chris.

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