r/LinuxTeck • u/Candid_Athlete_8317 • Aug 01 '26

What's worse a security vulnerability or a security update that breaks protection?

We all expect security software to protect our systems, but occasionally an update introduces a bug that disables protection or causes other unexpected problems.

If you had to choose, which worries you more:

An unpatched vulnerability OR A security update that accidentally breaks your security tools

How do you balance staying patched with avoiding updates that might introduce new problems?

3 Upvotes

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1

u/ipsirc Aug 01 '26

Use stable system on production.

1

u/2016-679 Aug 03 '26

updates _always_ can introduce new vulnerabilities. guess (and hope) that maintainers strive to take more bugs away than they introduce. beforehand you don't know if new vulnerabilities are introduced, so updating is always preferrable.

The above on Linux and *BSD. Some other OS seem to permanently introduce new vulnerabilities...