A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?” • Hacker News Board

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#121

Post by axelriet » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 9:45 AM UTC

tiraniddo wrote: post #112

axelriet wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft does not release the kernel’s private symbols, trust me on that. But yes there was some leaks in the past, small portions of NT4 and W2K were leaked, I think I link to a Google query pointing to articles discussing the leaks in the Quora reply.

Well that's categorically untrue. Sure they don't release private symbols intentionally but they have done in the past accidentally. At that point it becomes a bit of a grey area, undoubtedly leaked/stolen source code is a no-no but reversing from private symbols when they do leak seem harder to quantify as you still need to reverse engineer the code, just structures/names etc are already known. Private symbols are n…

I’d love that you point to an instance where the private symbols of the kernel actually shipped?

It is very possible that some private symbols were part of some leak, but stolen data does not qualify as “shipping” :)

Again, I stand behind my opinion. I eyeballed some of the code side-by-side and there was portions where I could literally see a line-by-line correlation, which I can hardly explain.

Then if reversing the kernel is so doable using legitimate means, why ReactOS is still largely stuck in the early 2000’s, coincidentally where the major leaks happened?

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#122

Post by tastroder » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 9:50 AM UTC

thom_nic wrote: post #15

jchw wrote: post #3

Interesting, but I’d really like it if they actually pointed out some examples. There may in fact be stolen source code or at least it is possible some stolen source code was referenced in ReactOS - there’s virtually no way to prove that it didn’t happen - but one human’s observation could be very flawed and represent a view extrapolated from a small subset of stolen code. How much of the code could they have possibl…

I was curious, and since the author of this answer provided links to what they called leaks [1], it's not difficult to download both the leak and ReactOS source [2] and look for similarities. So, out of curiosity, that's what I did. I started poking at some source files at random in ntoskernel, and it only took a minute to get some "hits" from the ReactOS source: $ rg InitializeContextThread ./ntoskrnl/ke/thrdobj.c:8…

I'm confused about those examples. Both symbols seem to be referenced in quite a few web resources that aren't dumps of that research kernel and either github search is a bit broken or I can't seem to find many of those in your [1] repository.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#123

Post by intea » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

Honestly I always thought that that was an open secret of ReactOS. How else are you gonna achieve binary compatibility with a closed source OS. Of course there's symbols but those only get you so far.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#124

Post by tiraniddo » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC

axelriet wrote: post #121

tiraniddo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's categorically untrue. Sure they don't release private symbols intentionally but they have done in the past accidentally. At that point it becomes a bit of a grey area, undoubtedly leaked/stolen source code is a no-no but reversing from private symbols when they do leak seem harder to quantify as you still need to reverse engineer the code, just structures/names etc are already known. Private symbols are n…

I’d love that you point to an instance where the private symbols of the kernel actually shipped? It is very possible that some private symbols were part of some leak, but stolen data does not qualify as “shipping” :) Again, I stand behind my opinion. I eyeballed some of the code side-by-side and there was portions where I could literally see a line-by-line correlation, which I can hardly explain. Then if reversing th…

The private symbols have in the past ended up on the public symbol server (and quickly taken down), they have ending up "shipping" in public symbol packs. I can't point to specific incidents as the links to them no longer exist. This is why I said accidentally as they were not released as a conscious effort on MS's part.

However you seem to want to claim the only place those symbols can come from is being stolen. Of course in this case you use leak as a synonym for stolen, bit leak can just as much mean they were released accidentally by the owner, MS can't steal their own private symbols and release them on the web. I'm sure there's some symbol files traded in private scenarios which are actually taken through non public means but there have been actual incidences of public release of private symbols.

I'm not trying to claim that ReactOS is clean, I have no skin in the game from a project or user perspective. For all I know it might have lifted significant portions of its code from stolen source code or the WRK (which isn't stolen in so much as used without permission, which I'd regard as a totally different thing). I do however take exception to the typical software engineer's view there are somethings which cannot be reverse engineered into a almost similar form.

As to why ReactOS is stuck in the early 2000s, it could be because of all the source code which was stolen and put wholesale into the project. Although if that was the case I'd have expect MS would have sued the living shit of the project by now. It could also be because Windows was and is a very complex OS with many layers which if you're trying to re-implement with a team of 10s to 100s versus 1000s it's going to take a lot of time. It's seems unlikely that the project would spend the millions of man hours to create the abomination that is UWP.

Perhaps the best way to determine if ReactOS is unclean is for MS to open source the Windows Kernel, hell why would you even need ReactOS then :-)

edit: Cleanup.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#125

Post by teddyuk » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:09 AM UTC

axelriet wrote: post #121

tiraniddo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's categorically untrue. Sure they don't release private symbols intentionally but they have done in the past accidentally. At that point it becomes a bit of a grey area, undoubtedly leaked/stolen source code is a no-no but reversing from private symbols when they do leak seem harder to quantify as you still need to reverse engineer the code, just structures/names etc are already known. Private symbols are n…

I’d love that you point to an instance where the private symbols of the kernel actually shipped? It is very possible that some private symbols were part of some leak, but stolen data does not qualify as “shipping” :) Again, I stand behind my opinion. I eyeballed some of the code side-by-side and there was portions where I could literally see a line-by-line correlation, which I can hardly explain. Then if reversing th…

Often hotfixes came with private symbols, Microsoft has traditionally been very slack on this.

I’ve seen private symbols for sql server with the guid to switch editions published on the public symbol server for at least 6 months before they were pulled.

Full releases and service packs typically are stripped very well but if you are saying that no private symbols have been published to the public symbol servers then you are incorrect.

The only product that has been effective at stripping symbols traditionally has been office, they were always stripped if you could even get hold of them which was unlikely.

Don’t forget also you could download the checked windows builds which were very open.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#126

Post by Uptrenda » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:16 AM UTC

I appreciate the insider perspective (though I am definitely not qualified to assess these claims.) Unfortunately, it might be hard to prove these claims either way since it sounds like they have plenty of plausible deniability to fall back on.

What I will say is: I hope Axel's post doesn't negatively effect his career. We've all seen how controversial opinions and politically incorrect behavior have ended peoples employment in the past, and I honestly think its a ridiculous over-reaction.

I can't help but wonder if some of the answers here are driven by emotional, anti-MS sentiment. Some people seem way too invested, lmao. Just get some pop corn and see if anything interesting turns up. It might turn out to be a good history lesson.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#127

Post by realusername » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:18 AM UTC

axelriet wrote: post #121

tiraniddo wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that's categorically untrue. Sure they don't release private symbols intentionally but they have done in the past accidentally. At that point it becomes a bit of a grey area, undoubtedly leaked/stolen source code is a no-no but reversing from private symbols when they do leak seem harder to quantify as you still need to reverse engineer the code, just structures/names etc are already known. Private symbols are n…

I’d love that you point to an instance where the private symbols of the kernel actually shipped? It is very possible that some private symbols were part of some leak, but stolen data does not qualify as “shipping” :) Again, I stand behind my opinion. I eyeballed some of the code side-by-side and there was portions where I could literally see a line-by-line correlation, which I can hardly explain. Then if reversing th…

> Then if reversing the kernel is so doable using legitimate means, why ReactOS is still largely stuck in the early 2000’s, coincidentally where the major leaks happened?

Because they don't care or need about the newer MS stuff and also don't have the resources either.

Also they can exploit Microsoft good record of backward compatibility, once you have a good enough lower API compatibility, you can just install a lot of newer MS tech directly on top of it.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#128

Post by kerng » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

Why reverse engineer? The Windows code has been available via shared source license since nearly 20 years....

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#129

Post by kerng » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:43 AM UTC

acqq wrote: post #77

axelriet wrote: post #70

Thanks for the link, o for a bunch of new followers on Quora today and was wondering why :) There are lots of good answers in this thread. In particular, someone took the time to look at the code, and that person wrote it only took them minutes to find similarities that make my opinion difficult to dismiss. About the lack of documentation, consider that only a tiny fraction of the kernel’s internals surface in the DD…

> Consider that the name of local variables is never part of the binaries, only public symbols are. "Never" and "only public" are wrong in the statement above, because non public symbols were indeed released by Microsoft. I guess you are young enough not to know that Microsoft accidentally did release some NT builds with the names of the internal variables, and such builds were intentionally made with less compiler o…

Also, the Windows code is under shared source license for nearly 20 years. Not really some sensitive secret thing or crown jewels that many want us to believe.

Re: A Kernel Engineer at Microsoft's Answer to “What Do You Think about ReactOS?”

#130

Post by axelriet » Wed, Jul 03, 2019, 10:45 AM UTC

dingby wrote: post #117

axelriet wrote: post #70

Thanks for the link, o for a bunch of new followers on Quora today and was wondering why :) There are lots of good answers in this thread. In particular, someone took the time to look at the code, and that person wrote it only took them minutes to find similarities that make my opinion difficult to dismiss. About the lack of documentation, consider that only a tiny fraction of the kernel’s internals surface in the DD…

The more you write in these threads the more you sound like a fool. https://youtu.be/2D9ExVc0G10 Start around the 9 minute mark.

Thanks for the personal attack lol. I watched and did not learn much, except that he’s a quite decent orator. I think what he describes is the process he uses to write his books.