Why can't we get a proper installation method to keep OpenSSL at the latest revision for Linux?

[Michael McKenney]

I have never had a break in.   The Fortinet 60E firewall does an amazing job.   I will just leave it up to Ubuntu to provide the best OpenSSL solutions.   Many people complain Ubuntu LTS is never on the latest kernel and lacks other things the 9 month distros like 21.04 and 21.10 give you.    I tend to stay on LTS solutions.    I do patch weekly.

From: Jan Just Keijser <janjust at nikhef.nl>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 8:45 AM
To: Michael McKenney <mike.mckenney at scsiraidguru.com>; openssl-users at openssl.org
Subject: Re: Why can't we get a proper installation method to keep OpenSSL at the latest revision for Linux?

Hi,

On 31/05/21 13:01, Michael McKenney wrote:
My wordpress servers are under constant attack.  My Fortinet 60E firewall logs are filled.  Openssl is constantly reported on The Hacker News and other sites.   So I don't need to worry about upgrading OpenSSL in the future to 1.1.1k or above?   I can just use what the distro has to offer by apt?  Ubuntu 20.04 started with 1.1.1f.    My Kali server is mainly used for Try Hack Me challenges and learn cyber security.

if you use an LTS distro then you can trust the distro makers - if not, then there are thousands of servers out there that are vulnerable ;)

I run several public Wordpress sites on CentOS 7 and have locked them down quite rigorously - I have not had any breakins for the past 7 years or so, whilst relying fully on the RH/CentOS-supplied openssl library.

HTH,

JJK



From: Jan Just Keijser <janjust at nikhef.nl><mailto:janjust at nikhef.nl>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2021 5:55 AM
To: Michael McKenney <mike.mckenney at scsiraidguru.com><mailto:mike.mckenney at scsiraidguru.com>; openssl-users at openssl.org<mailto:openssl-users at openssl.org>
Subject: Re: Why can't we get a proper installation method to keep OpenSSL at the latest revision for Linux?

On 30/05/21 14:05, Michael McKenney wrote:
Why can't we get a proper installation method to keep OpenSSL at the latest revision for Linux?

My biggest compliant with Linux is it is so difficult to get best practice installations for services like OpenSSL.   Ubuntu is still on 1.1.1f.    I have been trying to upgrade to 1.1.1k.   Openssl version -a states I am on 1.1.1k.   When programs in Wordpress that use OpenSSL show I am using 1.1.1.f.   Spending hours of time on various sites like AskUbuntu.com, only to be disappointed.   Microsoft has best practices guides for installations.   Why can't we get them for Linux.


this is both very hard and undesirable:
openssl can be regarded as a low-level system library that is used by many applications across the entire Linux distribution. You cannot simply upgrade this low-level system library without breaking these applications. Admittedly, for an upgrade from 1.1.1f -> 1.1.1k the risk of introducing an API change is quite low, but for anything else (e.g. 1.1.0x -> 1.1.1k) you will almost certainly have to rebuild and relink all applications that depend on the OpenSSL libraries.
This is not something you can expect from the Linux distro maintainers. For them, it is far less risky to backport security fixes to the version of OpenSSL that they built their distro on (e.g. Ubuntu 20 > 1.1.1f; CentOS 7 -> 1.0.2k (yes!), etc).

Note that most update woes that Windows 10 has had over the past few years were related to library updates breaking applications - so even microsoft has problems with "best practices".

HTH,

JJK

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