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“They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

lore.kernel.org

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Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#171

Post by duxup »

ENOTTY wrote: post #22

Later down thread from Greg K-H: > Because of this, I will now have to ban all future contributions from your University. Understandable from gkh, but I feel sorry for any unrelated research happening at University of Minnesota. EDIT: Searching through the source code[1] reveals contributions to the kernel from umn.edu emails in the form of an AppleTalk driver and support for the kernel on PowerPC architectures. In t…

Seems like a bit of a strong response. Universities are large places with lots of professors and people with different ideas, opinions, views, and they don't work in concert, quite the opposite. They're not some corporation with some unified goal or incentives.

I like that. That's what makes universities interesting to me.

I don't like the standard here of of penalizing or lumping everyone there together, regardless of they contribute in the past, now, in the future or not.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#172

Post by lfc07 »

Their research could have been an advisory email or a blogpost for the maintainers without the nasty experiments. If they really cared for OSS they would have have collaborated with the maintainers and persuaded them to use their software tools for patch work. There is research for good of all and there is research for selfish gains. I am convinced this is the later.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#173

Post by bobthechef »

pmiller2 wrote: post #156
ENOTTY wrote: post #22

Later down thread from Greg K-H: > Because of this, I will now have to ban all future contributions from your University. Understandable from gkh, but I feel sorry for any unrelated research happening at University of Minnesota. EDIT: Searching through the source code[1] reveals contributions to the kernel from umn.edu emails in the form of an AppleTalk driver and support for the kernel on PowerPC architectures. In t…

I find it hard to believe this research passed IRB.

How thorough is IRB review? My gut feeling is that these are not necessarily the most conscientious or informed bodies. Add into the mix a proposal that conceals the true nature of what's happening.

(All of this ASSUMING that the intent was as described in the thread.)

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#174

Post by xbar »

ENOTTY wrote: post #22

Later down thread from Greg K-H: > Because of this, I will now have to ban all future contributions from your University. Understandable from gkh, but I feel sorry for any unrelated research happening at University of Minnesota. EDIT: Searching through the source code[1] reveals contributions to the kernel from umn.edu emails in the form of an AppleTalk driver and support for the kernel on PowerPC architectures. In t…

This is not responsible research. This is similar to initiating fluid mechanics experiments on the wings of a Lufthansa A320 in flight to Frankfurt with a load of Austrians.

There are a lot of people to feel bad for, but none is at the University of Minnesota. Think of the Austrians.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#175

Post by Blikkentrekker »

kstenerud wrote: post #3
kdbg wrote: post #2

I don't think there have been any recent comments from anyone at U.Mn. So, back when the original research (happened last year) the following clarification was offered by Qiushi Wu and Kangjie Lu which atleast paints their research in somewhat better light: https://www-users.cs.umn.edu/~kjlu/papers/clarifications-hc.... That said the current incident seems to have gone beyond the limits of that one and is a new incid…

From their explanation: (3). We send the incorrect minor patches to the Linux community through email to seek their feedback. (4). Once any maintainer of the community responds to the email, indicating “looks good”, we immediately point out the introduced bug and request them to not go ahead to apply the patch. At the same time, we point out the correct fixing of the bug and provide our proper patch. In all the three…

> You do not experiment on people without their consent. This is in fact the very FIRST point of the Nuremberg code:

> 1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential.

Which is rather useless, as for many experiments to work, participants have to either be lied to, or kept in the dark as to the nature of the experiment, so whatever “consent” they give is not informed consent. They simply consent to “participate in an experiment” without being informed as to the qualities thereof so that they truly know what they are signing up for.

Of course, it's quite common in the U.S.A. to perform practice medical checkups on patients who are going under narcosis for an unrelated operations, and they never consented to that, but the hospitals and physicians that partake in that are not sanctioned as it's “tradition”.

Know well that so-called “human rights” have always been, and shall always be, a show of air that lack substance.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#178

Post by foobar33333 »

seanieb wrote: post #28

Regardless of their methods, I think they just proved the kernel security review process is non-existent. Either in the form of static analysis or human review. Whats being done to address those issues?

>Whats being done to address those issues?

Moving to rust to limit the scope of possible bugs.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#179

Post by noxer »

rcxdude wrote: post #111
noxer wrote: post #86

Someone does voluntary work and people think that gives them some ethical privilege to be asked before someone puts their work to the test? Sure it would be nice to ask but at the same time it renders the testing useless. They wanted to see how the review goes if they aren't aware that someone is testing them. You cant do this with consent. The wasting time argument is nonsense too its not like they did this thousand…

Or you could cease to do the voluntary work for them, because they clearly are not contributing to your goals. This is what the kernel maintainers have chosen and they have just as much right to do so. And you can perfectly well do this with consent, there's a wealth of knowledge from psychology and sociology on how you can run tests on people with consent and without invalidating the test.

I never said they can not stop reviewing the code. They can do whatever the heck they want. I'm not gonna tell a volunteer what they can and can not do. They just as much dont need anyone's consent to ignore submits as thous who submitting dont need their consent. Its voluntary, if you dont see a benefit you are free to stop, not free to tell other volunteers what to do and not to do.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#180

Post by Foxboron »

ENOTTY wrote: post #22

Later down thread from Greg K-H: > Because of this, I will now have to ban all future contributions from your University. Understandable from gkh, but I feel sorry for any unrelated research happening at University of Minnesota. EDIT: Searching through the source code[1] reveals contributions to the kernel from umn.edu emails in the form of an AppleTalk driver and support for the kernel on PowerPC architectures. In t…

It's important to note that they used temporary emails for the patches in this research. It's detailed in the paper.

The main problem is that they have (so far) refused to explain in detail how the patches where reviewed and how. I have not gotten any links to any lkml post even after Kangjie Lu personally emailed me to address any concerns.

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