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“They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

lore.kernel.org

271–280 of 1001 posts

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#271

The 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. I think the idea is 60% deterrence via collective punishment - "if we punish the whole university, people will be less likely to do this in future" - and 40% "we must do something, and this is something, therefore we must do it".

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#272
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…

This does paint there side better, but it also makes me wonder if they're being wrongly accused of this current round of patches? That clarification says that they only submitted 3 patches, and that they used a random email address when doing so (so presumably no @umn.edu).

These ~200 patches from UMN being reverted might have nothing to do with these researchers at all.

Hopefully someone from the university clarifies what's happening soon before the angry mob tries to eat the wrong people.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#276

The 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…

Isn't this reaction a bit like the emperor banishing anyone who tells him that his new clothes are fake? Are the maintainers upset that someone showed how easy it is to subvert kernel security?

It’s more like the emperor banning a group of people who put the citizens in danger just so they could show that it could be done. The researchers did something unethical and acted in a self-serving manner. It’s no surprise that someone would get kicked out of a community after seriously breaking the trust of that community.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#277
The full title is "Linux bans University of Minnesota for sending buggy patches in the name of research" and it seems to justify the ban. It's not as though these students were just bad programmers, they were intentionally introducing bugs, performing unethical experimentation on volunteers and members of another organization without their consent.

Unfortunately even if the latest submissions were sent with good intentions and have nothing to do with the bug research, the University has certainly lost the trust of the kernel maintainers.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#279
From an infosec perspective, I think this is a knee-jerk response to someone attempting a penetration test in good faith and failing.

The system appears to have worked, so that's good news for Linux. On the other hand, now that the university has been banned, they won't be able to find holes in the process that may remain, that's bad news for Linux.

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