An update has now been committed to the -stable branch for the latest firefox version, and the package is available for updating!

Previously, solene@ wrote:
Dear OpenBSD users, due to Firefox being too complicated to package (thanks to cbindgen and rust dependencies) on the stable branch (as this would require testing all rust consumers), the 6.6-stable branch won't receive updates for www/mozilla-firefox, so it will remain vulnerable to MFSA2020-03 and vulnerabilities that may appear after.

Tom Smyth writes in about an interview he did with Theo de Raadt in between g2k19, the general hackathon in Ottawa, and BSDCAN 2019:

Have you ever wondered about the whys and the hows Theo and his friends in OpenBSD relentlessly pursue security perfection in computer operating systems and the software that runs on them? Or perhaps you are more concerned with much deeper questions like : What operating system does Theo use on his Laptop? Who is his favourite developer? Who is his favourite user / sysadmin? Or you are just in need of some serious life tips on dealing with trolls?

Ok enough with the superficial questions… lets let Theo do the talking… check out the video here

A big Thank you goes to Theo for his time in the interview. I enjoyed making it with him, and I hope you all enjoy it, and I hope the wider public learn something new from it too.

Many thanks to Theo indeed, and also to Tom for doing the interview. We hope to see more soon!

Next up from the snowy Elk Lakes area with his Hackathon Report is Stefan Sperling (stsp@):

My hike to the Elk Lakes hut was more pleasent this time compared to last time (s2k17). Partly because the weather was better overall this time around. And I knew what to expect and had planned ahead better. I had left my thick and heavy jacket at home which had turned out to be a nuisance, being too warm and too heavy for hiking. I packed a light and thin rain jacket instead to protect against wind and rain, but we didn't get either so the jacket stayed in the bag. My backpack still felt a bit heavy on the hike in, but that was due to lunch snacks which were all eaten up by the time we hiked back out.

The Internet Security Research Group and partners have announced that Claudio Jeker (claudio@) is the third Radiant Award recipient. From the announcement:

We’re excited to announce the third Radiant Award recipient, Claudio Jeker.

When we at ISRG think about the greatest threats to Web security today, the lack of Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) security might top our list. Claudio's passion for networking, his focus on security, and his talent as a software developer are enabling him to make great contributions to fixing this and other Web security problems. In particular, he is making great contributions to OpenBSD and OpenBGPD.

Congratulations Claudio!

Alexandr Nedvedicky (sashan@) wrote to tech@ regarding a recent significant change:

Hello,

commit from today [1] makes IP stack more paranoid. Up to now OpenBSD
implemented so called 'weak host model' [2]. The today's commit alters
that for hosts, which don't forward packets (don't act as routers).

Your laptops, desktops and servers now check packet destination address
with IP address bound to interface, where such packet is received on.
If there will be mismatch the packet will be discarded and 'wrongif'
counter will be bumped. You can use 'netstat -s|grep wrongif' to
display the counter value.

It is understood the behavior, which has been settled in IP stack since 80's,
got changed. tech@openbsd.org (or bugs@openbsd.org) wants to hear back from you,
if this change breaks your existing set up. There is a common believe this
change won't hurt majority (> 97%) users, though there is some non-zero risk,
hence this announcement is being sent.

thanks and
regards
sashan

[1] https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-cvs&m=157580332113635&w=2

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_model

Fresh from the just concluded e2k19 hackathon, Claudio Jeker (claudio@) writes in:

After 2 years it was once again time to pack skis and snowshoes, put a satellite dish onto a sledge and hike through the snowy rockies to the Elk Lakes hut.

Theo de Raadt (deraadt@) has committed code for a new exploit-prevention mechanism:

[…]
Repurpose the "syscalls must be on a writeable page" mechanism to
enforce a new policy: system calls must be in pre-registered regions.
We have discussed more strict checks than this, but none satisfy the
cost/benefit based upon our understanding of attack methods, anyways
let's see what the next iteration looks like.

This is intended to harden (translation: attackers must put extra
effort into attacking) against a mixture of W^X failures and JIT bugs
which allow syscall misinterpretation, especially in environments with
polymorphic-instruction/variable-sized instructions.  It fits in a bit
with libc/libcrypto/ld.so random relink on boot and no-restart-at-crash
behaviour, particularily for remote problems. Less effective once on-host
since someone the libraries can be read.
[…]

The full commit details are well worth reading, as is the manual page for the (new) msyscall(2), and some associated discussion on tech@.

As this change involves ABI breakage, upgrading via snapshots is the easiest way to avoid trouble.

Florian Obser (florian@) has committed code to give unwind(8) a flexible approach to resolving strategies:

Modified files:
	sbin/unwind    : resolver.c resolver.h 
	usr.sbin/unwindctl: unwindctl.c 

Log message:
Instead of only considering if a resolving strategy is dead, works or
validates, measure how well it is doing.

Next up in our hackathon series from p2k19 is one from Stefan Sperling (stsp@), who writes:

My main goal for the p2k19 hackathon was 9260 device support in iwm(4). Firmware updates for previous device generation were an important prerequisite step. One day before p2k19, the oldest generation of hardware supported by the iwm(4) driver was switched to latest available firmware images.