# Blog - #1

## systemd Insecurity

Posted: 2022-01-29 (UTC+00:00)

Updated: 2022-11-14 (UTC+00:00)

## Table of Contents

- Issue #0 - Against CVE Assignment
- Issue #1 - CVEs Are Not Useful
- Issue #2 - Security is a Circus
- Issue #3 - Blaming the User

Anyone who cares about security may want to switch from systemd as soon as possible; its lead developer doesn't care about your security at all.

## Issue #0 - Against CVE Assignment

Poettering:
"You don't assign CVEs to every single random bugfix we do, do you?"

My thoughts:
Yes, if they're security-related.

Source:
systemd GitHub Issue 5998

## Issue #1 - CVEs Are Not Useful

Poettering:
"Humpf, I am not convinced this is the right way to announce this. We never did that, and half the CVEs aren't useful anyway, hence I am not sure we should start with that now, because it is either inherently incomplete or blesses the nonsensical part of the CVE circus which we really shouldn't bless..."

My thoughts:
CVEs are supposed to be for security, and a log of when they were found and their severity, so yes, it *is* the correct way to announce it. It seems as if over 95 security-concious people think the same.

Source:
systemd GitHub Issue 6225

## Issue #2 - Security is a Circus

Poettering:
"I am not sure I buy enough into the security circus to do that though for any minor issue..."

Source:
systemd GitHub Issue 5144

## Issue #3 - Blaming the User

Poettering:
"Yes, as you found out "0day" is not a valid username. I wonder which tool permitted you to create it in the first place. Note that not permitting numeric first characters is done on purpose: to avoid ambiguities between numeric UID and textual user names.
systemd will validate all configuration data you drop at it, making it hard to generate invalid configuration. Hence, yes, it's a feature that we don't permit invalid user names, and I'd consider it a limitation of xinetd that it doesn't refuse an invalid username.
So, yeah, I don't think there's anything to fix in systemd here. I understand this is annoying, but still: the username is clearly not valid."

My thoughts:
systemd was the thing that allowed root access just because a username started with a number, then Poettering blamed the user.

Source:
systemd GitHub Issue 6237