back to article Systemd wins top gong for 'lamest vendor' in Pwnie security awards

The annual Pwnie Awards for serious security screw-ups saw hardly anyone collecting their prize at this year's ceremony in Las Vegas. That's not surprising: government officials, US spy agencies, and software makers aren’t usually in the mood to acknowledge their failures. The Pwnies give spray-painted pony statues to those …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Devuan smugness

    I get to be smug not only to windows users (especially windows 10), but also other Linux users for being blighted by systemD. This is awesome.

    1. datafabric

      Re: Devuan smugness

      To kill -9 systemd, fork RHEL/CentOS without systemd, similar to devuan. Red Hat will abandon systemd when the fork has enough traction.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Devuan smugness

        > Red Hat will abandon systemd when the fork has enough traction.

        Doubtful. You gotta understand what systemd actually is; the idea is to build a piece of software that will rival the kernel in terms of importance to Linux. This way Red Hat's puppet Lenny Poettering becomes as influential as Linus.

        The hat? Genuine bacofoil that.

    2. eldakka

      Re: Devuan smugness

      other Linux users for being blighted by systemD.

      Devuan isn't the only distro that either avoids systemd entirely or allows you to choose whether to use systemd or not.

      1. Dan 55 Silver badge

        Re: Devuan smugness

        Distrowatch's search page allows you to search distributions by criteria. It's got an init field where you choose the inits you're interested in... and "not systemd".

        No other init has a "not" field, only systemd, for some reason.

        Unfortunately it lists 177 active distributions with systemd and 94 active distributions without systemd. That's how much this disease has spread.

    3. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: Devuan smugness

      To be fair you need an existing admin to create a user starting with a number (which most don't because back in the day it wasn't allowed) then they need to create a Unit file with that user specified as owner, then the user needs to get root anyway to get write access to that Unit file to do anything.

      1. wheelybird

        Re: Devuan smugness

        Or alternatively a poorly put-together package might include such a unit file and then you end up with a service running as root when you weren't expecting it.

        Most people agree that it's a difficult security hole to exploit easily, but that doesn't detract from the fact that it it a security hole. The issue people have is the systemd team's response to this bug report (mainly your man Poettering here) and to other bug reports that people submit. The response is essentially "I refuse to acknowledge this is a bug - this is an issue with everyone else."

        In a world where everyone else is scrambling to fix years of sub-optimal security in code (both open-source and closed-source), the systemd team seem to be adopting a policy of doesn't-apply-to-us, which is bizarre when the code they're writing is such a fundamental part of the operating system.

    4. Brad Ackerman
      Devil

      Re: Devuan smugness

      FreeBSD. Don't just come for the DTrace and ZFS; come for the tequila.

    5. rtfazeberdee

      Re: Devuan smugness

      Why? There were no awards to systemd project for security hacks of systemd. Just a lame award for not liking what someone says.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Devuan smugness

        "!Just a lame award for not liking what someone says."

        Really? I read it as an award from security professionals for a cavalier attitude to security.

      2. phuzz Silver badge

        Re: Devuan smugness

        "Why? There were no awards to systemd project for security hacks of systemd. Just a lame award for not liking what someone says."

        You are Lennart Poettering and I claim my £20.

  2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    Systemd...

    I thought it was bad.

    Didn't realize it was so epic a fail.

    An award richly deserved.

    1. thames

      Re: Systemd...

      And here's how the Systemd devs will acknowledge it:

      • "Systemd - the award winning init system".
      • "Systemd - won awards at an international security conference".
      • "Systemd - no other init system has won so many security related awards".
      • "Systemd - mentioned numerous times in the press in relation to security, robustness, and reliability".
      • "Systemd - the developers are renowned for their approach to solving customer problems".
      • etc.

      Criticism flows off them like water off a duck's arse.

      1. big_D Silver badge
        Pint

        Re: Systemd...

        Great answer, have some hair of the dog...

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Holmes

          Re: Systemd...

          I love it when others admit they can't properly administer or secure systemd setups.

          Job security for me.

          1. rtfazeberdee

            Re: Systemd...

            Yep. just shows that the anti-systemd trolls don't understand that systemd was not awarded this "lame" award for being hacked, it was awarded for a difference on opinion with which the presenters of the award disagreed. It would have been different if they had been able to create a hack. Hell, who'd expect the antis' to work that out anyway.

            1. jake Silver badge

              Re: Systemd...

              What flavo(u)r was the Kool-Aid, rtfazeberdee?

            2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

              Re: Systemd...

              "it was awarded for a difference on opinion with which the presenters of the award disagreed."

              Namely the opinion of whether or not to take security seriously.

  3. Dazed and Confused

    I never realised

    systemd was a winner

    1. Robert Moore
      Joke

      systemd was a winner

      Words no one has ever used before? Alex.

      1. Captain DaFt

        Re: systemd was a winner

        systemd was a winner

        Words no one has ever used before? Alex.

        In this case, it wins at failing.

        1. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

          Re: systemd was a winner

          In this case, it wins at failing.

          Does Trump run Redhat?

  4. conscience

    No surprise that the blight on the landscape that is systemd gets a prize for their constant and repeated failures.

    1. asdf

      yeah

      Its almost as if once a corporate entity has enough resources and gets that critical dependency in udev they can through a pure crap flood of code get everyone to go along with them. Red Hat making FOSS Linux only for well over a decade now.

  5. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Maybe they missed a trick here. Instead of Poettering they could have nominated his employer, Red Hat. A corporation might respond to the bad publicity whereas Poettering seems to think the whole thing is, to use his own term, a circus and dismisses it.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Don't worry

      The apparent hate that many pure FLOSS fans have for RedHat will only be amplified after this.

      How dare a company rake in a Billion $$$$ from releasing FREE Software?

      You can prise my CentOS 6.9 (no Systemd) systems from my cold dead hands. Until it is either dropped entirely or given a severe pruning (why does the init system need to do DNS lookups?, shakes head in bewilderment) I won't be using it for a long time.

      IMHO, Pottering found the wrong solution to a problem that for 99% of us did not exist.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Don't worry

        I've no problem with any company making money from releasing FLOSS who, after all, are the largest contributors. In fact, a commercial vendor is more likely to respond to users than an independent developer who has nothing to lose or gain from the responses to their work.

        In Red Hat's case, however, I can't avoid the thought that, as things have worked out, they are now (AFAIK) the only resort for those who need a commercial vendor-supported distro and want it to be systemd-free. Is that irony or a clever ploy?

        1. keithpeter Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Don't worry

          "Is that irony or a clever ploy?"

          @Dr Syntax: I'm assuming that you are referring to RHEL 6. I suspect that it is just the releases working their way through the Gantt chart. My hypothesis will be disproved if and when a special 'extended life' subscription (at a premium price) appears for RHEL 6 near 2019. A further disproof would be a Fedora release coming with a choice of init (cold day in hades &c).

          Coat: Centos 7 actually works fine for this clueless end user desktop operative, so off out.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Holmes

        Re: Don't worry

        "Until it is either dropped entirely or given a severe pruning (why does the init system need to do DNS lookups?, shakes head in bewilderment)"

        resolved can be turned off pretty easily. Not that anyone here is looking for solutions or is at all interested in learning how systemd actually operates.

      3. rtfazeberdee

        Re: Don't worry

        "(why does the init system need to do DNS lookups?, shakes head in bewilderment) " - well, if you knew anything about it instead of replying on the ignorant posts of trolls, you'd know that the "init" part does not do DNS look ups. Any binary with a "systemd-" prefix is part of the project and completely optional.

        1. keithpeter Silver badge
          Coat

          Re: Don't worry

          "Any binary with a "systemd-" prefix is part of the project and completely optional."

          Agreed. However upstream programmers may well be tempted to support only the systemd-* components as it makes their job easier, and packagers for various distributions may be tempted to include hard dependencies on the systemd-* components because they assume their presence.

          So in effect the random walk that is Linux development (lots of projects all producing code that depends on the state of other projects also producing code with many feedback loops) may collapse into a stable mono-culture. Consequences to be witnessed. Possibly detrimental. Bit early to tell.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Holmes

            Re: Don't worry

            "So in effect the random walk that is Linux development (lots of projects all producing code that depends on the state of other projects also producing code with many feedback loops) may collapse into a stable mono-culture."

            For 25 years, there's been non-stop freakout about Linux allowing "TOO MANY CHOICES!!!"

            Now, there's non-stop freakout about Linux possibly "collapsing into a stable mono-culture".

            Meanwhile, anyone who knows their stuff just keeps working and ignores the noise.

            1. keithpeter Silver badge
              Coat

              Re: Don't worry

              "Now, there's non-stop freakout about Linux possibly "collapsing into a stable mono-culture""

              Can't speak for others, I'm not actually freaking out as such, just trying to understand the dynamics at a whole system level.

              FOSS has been pumping out lines of code for - what - 30 odd years without much in the way of an overall plan (bazaar c.f. cathedral &c) except building something that keeps working. Complex systems with strong linkage between elements will tend to exhibit a limited range of behaviours.

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system

              A dose of mono-culture might be for the best - we'll have to see.

              Coat: Remember I just consume this stuff.

          2. dbannon

            Re: Don't worry

            "Agreed. However upstream programmers may well be tempted to support only the systemd-* components as it makes their job easier, and packagers for various distributions may be tempted to include hard dependencies on the systemd-* components because they assume their presence."

            Ah, I think I understand now. The problem with systemd is its too good at what it does.

            1. asdf

              Re: Don't worry

              >The problem with systemd is its too good at what it does.

              Tangling up dependencies so more and more FOSS has a dependency on the Linux kernel? Finally driving a stake through POSIX? I know lets shove as much functionality as we can in the one process that has to run or we get a kernel panic. What could go wrong?

            2. keithpeter Silver badge
              Coat

              Re: Don't worry

              "Ah, I think I understand now. The problem with systemd is its too good at what it does."

              @dbannon: excellent reply, but of course it does not have to be 'too good' just 'good enough' and easier/less work than what came before. That is why software generally needs faster processors/more memory/ big libraries in layers &c over time. And it works.

              Redhat must ensure that systemd-* is fit for purpose and that bugs are responded to rapidly as they have bet their business on it until around 2028(?) (RHEL 8 support EOL based on past releases). I imagine that people with more of a mindset around responsive bug-fixing and quality will take over the maintenance from those who 'move fast and break things' (to mis-quote)

              Coat: usual disclaimer - clueless end user

            3. CrazyOldCatMan Silver badge

              Re: Don't worry

              The problem with systemd is its too good at what it does.

              Where "at what it does" == "cause security holes"+"emulate the worst aspects of the Borg"+"lead developers obtuse blindness to any form of critisism"+"be an answer to a question that very, very few were asking"+"further taking linux in the direction of Windows"..

              There is a reason why I no longer use linux for the majority of my VMs - FreeBSD all the way. Anything that "has" to be linux (Ubiquiti controller for example" has now been rebuilt under Devuan.

        2. UncleWarthog

          Re: Don't worry

          "Any binary with a "systemd-" prefix is part of the project and completely optional."

          That's awesome! Can you please tell me how to get rid of systemd-journald?

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Don't worry

            "That's awesome! Can you please tell me how to get rid of systemd-journald?"

            systemctl mask systemd-journald.service

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pottering

    I've worked with a couple devs who were confident they could never err, contrary to all evidence. It is grating, much more than an average screamer or blowhard - to the point I've considered quitting when it looked like we might be on the same project, and in one case made clear to management that customers would have to be the first to work with a feature if they couldn't assign someone else to look at the bugs. (They chose not to assign anyone else, hence anon - and I apologize if you were one of the customers.)

    Anyway reading Pottering's comments reminded me of those old battles. I feel sorry for the folks who have to work with him and yet are trying to get a good product out - best of luck to you!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Pottering

      '.. I feel sorry for the folks who have to work with him'

      I suppose I'd feel sorry for people forced to work with him, but the impression I keep getting is that there's some sort of 'personality cult' thing going on there...he has acolytes, not colleagues.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Haters

    "lamest vendor response award went to Systemd supremo Lennart Poettering"

    Haters! Luddites! They can't be bothered to learn cool new technology! Oh, wait...

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Mind you, systemd is useful for something

    If you want a quick and easy way of separating the wheat from the chaff during staff hunting then systemd is a winner.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    The problem with Systemd

    Systemd isn't an init system, the goal is to replace most/all Linux OS userspace with Systemd. This is no accident, one of the designers is quoted as saying as much, the actual website escapes me at the moment. The other problem is that Lennart Poettering is an ignorant prick with an over inflated sense of his own technical abilities.

    1. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: The problem with Systemd

      Was it something like this: systemd and Where We Want to Take the Basic Linux Userspace in 2016?

      Last year DNS/DNSSEC, networking, containers, and control groups were on his list. Obviously he's not going to stop there, it seems his idea is to replace everything that isn't the kernel or GNU command line utilities with systemd but he's not even particularly good at it, he's just stitching together some kind of Frankenstein's monster.

      1. GrumpenKraut
        Mushroom

        Re: The problem with Systemd

        Form the link you provide: "Basically, if something is a reasonably low-level userspace component, highly generically useful, required in most applications of the OS, would benefit from tighter integration in the OS layer, and has a clear future in tomorrow’s technology, then it might be a job for systemd."

        Fuck. Me. Sideways.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Dan

        "but he's not even particularly good at it, he's just stitching together some kind of Frankenstein's monster."

        No, that would be an insult to doctor Frankenstein who's name is even now still well known :D I mean, at least his monster actually did what it was supposed to ;)

  10. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    "he's not even particularly good at it,..stitching together some kind of Frankenstein's monster."

    "It's alive! Alive I tell you!"

    Oh dear, this can only get worse until something quite bad happens.

    1. jake Silver badge

      Re: "he's not even particularly good at it ::mercy snip::

      IMO, systemd is a cancer that is growing out of control, and needs to be cut out of Linux before it infects enough of the system to kill it permanently.

  11. keithpeter Silver badge
    Coat

    Modern(ism)

    "...and has a clear future in tomorrow’s technology..."

    @GrumpenKraut and all

    A cultural studies Masters' thesis topic could well be the use of phrases such as 'modern' and 'tomorrow's technology' by Dr(?) Poettering and his colleagues. The framing is outrageous - it is less than half a lifetime since we were writing programs on punched cards.

    I'm sure that RedHat will make it all work because they have a $2.5 x 10^9 business that depends on it all working. It will be interesting to see how things go when the bulk of servers depend on operating systems that use the technology. I predict a far more responsive approach to (properly written) bug reports by people with a practical mind set.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm surprised anyone else hasn't gone with this,

    I present to you Special D,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJEoNtN7j04

    Almost as bad as systemd.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I presuppose we replace system D with flash. Wait I thought folks here did not believe in violence or the use of guns .

    Fine lets replace it with java.

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Trollface

      "Fine lets replace it with java."

      That would be android

    2. kain preacher

      How about Java Script ?

  14. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Paris Hilton

    The Norks did WannaCry? Russia did the Shadow Brokers?

    The epic 0wnage award was split between North Korea and Russia for launching the WannaCry ransomware contagion and masterminding the Shadow Brokers, respectively.

    Frankly, this spounds like a sponsored politicial message and rather out of place.

    1. nice spam database '); drop table users; --

      Re: The Norks did WannaCry? Russia did the Shadow Brokers?

      This site is infested with this kind of rubbish. NK struggles with basic agricultural problems but somehow managed to do a steal NSA's backdoors and engineer the wannacry attack... This is a false flag operation that, thankfully, nobody took too seriously.

  15. nice spam database '); drop table users; --

    Very convenient

    So a nation that is know for its isolation and lack of advanced technology or even basic technology suddenly steals an NSA backdoor and uses it to launch wannacry attack? We're talking about a place where the few TV's they have are still CRT, where people are struggling with basic agricultural issues. Who donesn't see this is a false flag attempt gone puff? It's ridiculous now. But we are talking about the empire trying to start a nuclear war with NK so it's not funny-ridiculous. Please stop spreading this kind of rubbish. We all know you need to sell page prints but you ought to have some degree of dignity.

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