kiwimate's Journal: What counts as "Stuff that matters"?

Got Tru64 Unix? It's vulnerable (SSH and IPsec) and /. doesn't want you to know about it.

Okay, so we know that complaining about story submissions is just going to get modded down (usually), and, fair enough, it happens, nothing personal. But I'm really curious as to why this one got rejected. Inside of 5 minutes -- that's a pretty quick dismissal.

2004-01-16 19:10:55 Critical HP Tru64 Unix security holes patched (articles,news) (rejected)

If you want to read it, it's here. What's up? HP has had to patch two vulnerabilities -- one in SSH, one in IPsec -- in Tru64 Unix. It's almost refreshing to see a non-Microsoft security nasty, I would've thought -- and it's also rather embarrassing for HP. Oh yeah...and potentially dangerous for anyone running Tru64 Unix.

Maybe someone else submitted it -- we'll see. Or maybe it's just considered not important enough, given the phasing out of Alpha. But given the delight with which any MS security flaws are greeted, I would've hoped this would at least make some sort of ripple. After all, it's not like there's a double standard or anything, is it?

Installed base, genius.

[Elwood P Dowd]

MS Security flaws are of note due to their massive installed base. When there's a hole, we can expect a worm to exploit it.

Anyone who cares about a couple holes in Tru64 unix will be subscribed to bugtraq and other relevant listservs. What on Earth would the /. comments add to a story about a hole in Tru64 Unix?

Tru64 not widespread

[phlack]

It's a dying OS, being desupported by Rational (now IBM), dataviews, among others. I don't know how many /. users use it, but I"m sure there are plenty more Solaris/Linux/HPUX/whatever users. And, of course, Windows.

DEC/Compaq/HP/whoever they are, sends out security patch notices regularly (though I haven't received one recently). Also posted on Tru64.org [tru64.org]. It just wouldn't be interesting to most /. users.

To me, yes, since I manage a Tru64 Unix cluster all day long, and think it's a great OS. But it