Who funds this? They acknowledge funding from the NSF but you could imagine that it would benefit some other large players to sow uncertainty and doubt about Open Source Software.
“They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
201–210 of 1001 posts
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#202The professor gets exactly what they want here, no? "We experimented on the linux kernel team to see what would happen. Our non-double-blind test of 1 FOSS maintenance group has produced the following result: We get banned and our entire university gets dragged through the muck 100% of the time". That'll be a fun paper to write, no doubt. Additional context: * One of the committers of these faulty patches, Aditya Pak…
> The thread then gets down to business and starts coordinating revert patches for everything committed by University of Minnesota email addresses.
What's preventing those bad actors from not using a UMN email address?
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I think all patches have come from people currently being advised by Kangjie Liu[3] or Liu himself dating back to Dec 2018 New plan: Show up at Liu's house with a lock picking kit while he's away at work, pick the front door and open it, but don't enter. Send him a photo, "hey, just testing, bro! Legitimate security research!"
If they wanted to do security research, they could have done so in the form of asking the reviewers to help; send them a patch and ask 'Is this something you would accept?', instead of intentionally sending malicious commits and causing static on the commit tree and mailing lists.
Wouldn't that draw more attention to the research patches, compared to a "normal" lkml patch? If you (as a maintainer) expected the patch to be malicious, wouldn't you be extra careful in reviewing it?
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#204Later 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…
The goal is not penalizing or lumping everyone together. The goal is to have the issue fixed in the most effective manner. It's not the Linux team's responsibility to allow contributions from some specific university, it's the university's. This measure enforces that responsibility. If they want access, they should rectify.
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#205As a user of the linux kernel, I feel legal action against the "researchers" should be pursued.
I feel somewhat similar. Since I am using Linux, they ultimately were trying to break the security of my computers. If I do that with any company without their consent, I can easily end up in jail.
How dare they highlight the vulnerability that exists in the process! The blasphemy!
How about you think about what they just proved, about the actors that *actually* try to break the security of the kernel.
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#206Later 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 think all patches have come from people currently being advised by Kangjie Liu[3] or Liu himself dating back to Dec 2018 New plan: Show up at Liu's house with a lock picking kit while he's away at work, pick the front door and open it, but don't enter. Send him a photo, "hey, just testing, bro! Legitimate security research!"
This is funny, but not at all a good analogy. There's obviously not remotely as much public interest or value in testing the security of this professor's private home to justify invading his privacy for the public interest. On the other hand, if he kept dangerous things at home (say, BSL-4 material), then his house would need 24/7 security and you'd probably be able to justify testing it regularly for the public's sake. So the argument here comes down to which extreme you believe the Linux kernel is closer to.
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#207Can someone explain what the kernel bugs were that were introduced, in general terms?
None.
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#208The professor gets exactly what they want here, no? "We experimented on the linux kernel team to see what would happen. Our non-double-blind test of 1 FOSS maintenance group has produced the following result: We get banned and our entire university gets dragged through the muck 100% of the time". That'll be a fun paper to write, no doubt. Additional context: * One of the committers of these faulty patches, Aditya Pak…
> The thread then gets down to business and starts coordinating revert patches for everything committed by University of Minnesota email addresses. What's preventing those bad actors from not using a UMN email address?
How would you catch those?
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#209The professor gets exactly what they want here, no? "We experimented on the linux kernel team to see what would happen. Our non-double-blind test of 1 FOSS maintenance group has produced the following result: We get banned and our entire university gets dragged through the muck 100% of the time". That'll be a fun paper to write, no doubt. Additional context: * One of the committers of these faulty patches, Aditya Pak…
> The thread then gets down to business and starts coordinating revert patches for everything committed by University of Minnesota email addresses. What's preventing those bad actors from not using a UMN email address?
Literally nothing. Instead of actual actions to improve the process it's only feel-good actions without any actual benefit to the kernel's security.
Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”
#210The professor gets exactly what they want here, no? "We experimented on the linux kernel team to see what would happen. Our non-double-blind test of 1 FOSS maintenance group has produced the following result: We get banned and our entire university gets dragged through the muck 100% of the time". That'll be a fun paper to write, no doubt. Additional context: * One of the committers of these faulty patches, Aditya Pak…
> The thread then gets down to business and starts coordinating revert patches for everything committed by University of Minnesota email addresses. What's preventing those bad actors from not using a UMN email address?
Nothing. However if they can't claim ownership of the drama they have caused it's not useful for research that's publishable so it does nix these idiots from causing further drama while working at this institution. For now.