UMN CS&E Statement on Linux Kernel Research

Post by a-dub » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 10:53 PM UTC

a-dub wrote: post #128

detaro wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you wanted to know if the kernel review process is able to reliably catch malicious attempts you literally could have just asked the kernel maintainers and they'd told you that no, review can't go that deep. Or looked at non-malicious bugs and observed that no, review does not catch all bugs with security implications. You'd very likely would have been able to get code past them even if you told them that there ar…

the project is 30 something odd years old now, and is no longer a hobby, it is now critical infrastructure that powers virtually everything. it's unfortunate that something happened in the project that cost the maintainers a lot of hours, that comes with the territory of working on important software, i'd argue. i don't want an espionagetastic fundamentally untrustable and inescapable computing hellscape, airplanes f…

Post by zacwest » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 10:54 PM UTC

kapp_in_life wrote: post #102

earthscienceman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone saying that it was a bad idea to ban the entire University isn't looking at the big picture. I look at it from a very philosophical standpoint: The entire idea of an academic (research) institution can be summarized as "an entity representing a group of trusted people who act in good faith of that institution". The moment one of your researchers acts in bad faith, or shows that they cannot be trusted, it's cle…

Banning the university is fine to send a message, but reverting all patches from umn emails seems very shortsighted to me. Especially blindly reverting patches years before this "research" was conducted that almost certainly have had context changes around them, likely introducing more harm than good.

Post by g42gregory » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 10:55 PM UTC

dshpala wrote: post #132

g42gregory wrote: post #105

I don't know why, but somehow I am not too bothered by the research itself. Sure, in retrospect, it does not sounds like it was the right thing to do (or the right way to do). But, you know, stuff happens. Instead, what bothered me immensely is the way the PhD student handled that interaction: immediately claiming "bias", "slander", playing "victim", etc... I don't know if he learned such a way to communicate from hi…

Maybe that was in line with the "research"? I think this can be an interesting topic in itself, how those trigger words and victim playing can get you through code reviews faster. It's certainly true in my company...

Post by shultays » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 10:56 PM UTC

kapp_in_life wrote: post #102

earthscienceman wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone saying that it was a bad idea to ban the entire University isn't looking at the big picture. I look at it from a very philosophical standpoint: The entire idea of an academic (research) institution can be summarized as "an entity representing a group of trusted people who act in good faith of that institution". The moment one of your researchers acts in bad faith, or shows that they cannot be trusted, it's cle…

Banning the university is fine to send a message, but reverting all patches from umn emails seems very shortsighted to me. Especially blindly reverting patches years before this "research" was conducted that almost certainly have had context changes around them, likely introducing more harm than good.

Post by kapp_in_life » Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 10:57 PM UTC

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #131

kapp_in_life wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We basically at this point assuming bad faith for all UMN patches This seems like a gross overreaction to three commits that didn't even make it into mainline. Especially when done for commits years before the "research" was done. But I suppose nobody can miss a chance to let loose a little outrage

There were more than three buggy commits, at least one of which is from this month