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March 06, 2009

D.J. Bernstein, I salute you!

I have long held a view that we get the software we deserve. The lack of quality, which manifests itself through defects, crashes, security and usability problems, is just a result of our buying decisions. By accepting to use crappy software we encourage software publishers to continue to give us more crap.

So it is a breath of fresh air to see D.J. Bernstein respond to a security report for djbdns:

Even though this bug affects very few users, it is a violation of the expected security policy in a reasonable situation, so it is a security hole in djbdns. Third-party DNS service is discouraged in the djbdns documentation but is nevertheless supported. Dempsky is hereby awarded $1000.

Not only that, but he apologises:

In the meantime, if any users are in the situation described above,
those users are advised to apply Dempsky's patch and requested to accept
my apologies. The patch is also recommended for other users; it corrects
the bug without any side effects.

D.J. Bernstein, I salute you!

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