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“They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

lore.kernel.org

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Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#901

Post by ineedasername »

blippage wrote: post #661
ltfish wrote: post #413

Some clarifications since they are unclear in the original report. - Aditya Pakki (the author who sent the new round of seemingly bogus patches) is not involved in the S&P 2021 research. This means Aditya is likely to have nothing to do with the prior round of patching attempts that led to the S&P 2021 paper. - According to the authors' clarification [1], the S&P 2021 paper did not introduce any bugs into Linux kerne…

> S&P 2021 paper did not introduce any bugs into Linux kernel. I used to work as an auditor. We were expected to conduct our audits to neither expect nor not expect instances of impropriety to exist. However, once we had grounds to suspect malfeasance, we were "on alert", and conduct tests accordingly. This is a good principle that could be applied here. We could bat backwards and forwards about whether the other sub…

What sort of lawsuit might they bring against a university whose researchers deliberately inserted malicious code into software that literally runs a good portion of the world?

I'm no lawyer, but it seems like there'd be something actionable.

On a side note, this brings into question any research written by any of the participating authors, ever. No more presumption of good faith.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#904

Post by slenk »

judge2020 wrote: post #432
macspoofing wrote: post #290

Linux maintainers should log a complaint with the University's ethics board. You can't just experiment on people without consent.

"Is it ethical to A/B test humans on web pages?"

Not if your intention is to cause harm....

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#905

Post by JPKab »

rzwitserloot wrote: post #181

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…

Yet another reason to absolutely despise the culture within academia. The US Federal government is subsidizing a collection of pathologically toxic institutions, and this is one of many results, along with HR departments increasingly mimicking the campus tribalism.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#906

Post by angry_octet »

spikels wrote: post #792
angry_octet wrote: post #384

Research without ethics is research without value. Unbelievable that this could have passed ethics review, so I'd bet it was never reviewed. Big black eye for University of Minnesota. Imagine if you are another doctoral student is CS/EE and this tool has ruined your ability to participate in Linux.

Ethics are highly subjective on the margins. In this case they completely missed this issue. However the opposite is more often the case. A good example is challenge testing Covid vaccines. This was widely deemed to be unethical despite large numbers of volunteers. Perhaps a million lives could have been saved if we had vaccines a few months sooner. Research without ethics (as currently practiced) can have value.

I can't agree that widespread challenge testing would have been ethical. It's a larger topic than HN can accommodate, but some factors I consider important: (1) NPIs are effective at reducing transmission, (2) the consequences of an outcome with side effects could include global and long-lived anti-vax sentiment -- COVID19 is unlikely to be our last pandemic.

Issue (2) arose with the EU response to rare AZ/J+J side effects, where I believe the EU is more deserving of criticism. They will undoubtedly cause more deaths in their own populations and throughout the world than would occur from clotting complications, but no one will hold them to account. But they weighed their equities as more important than global benefit.

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#908

Post by slenk »

bombcar wrote: post #688
aisio wrote: post #641

One reviewers comments to a patch of theirs from 2 weeks ago "Plainly put, the patch demonstrates either complete lack of understanding or somebody not acting in good faith. If it's the latter[1], may I suggest the esteemed sociologists to fuck off and stop testing the reviewers with deliberately spewed excrements?" https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/YH4Aa1zFAWkITsNK@zeniv-ca.linux...

Interesting - follow that thread and you find https://lore.kernel.org/linux-next/202104081640.1A09A99900@k... where coverity-bot says "this is bullshit": vvv CID 1503716: Null pointer dereferences (REVERSE_INULL) vvv Null-checking "rm" suggests that it may be null, but it has already been dereferenced on all paths leading to the check.

It also says if this is a false positive to let the "experimental semi-automated" bot know...

Re: “They introduce kernel bugs on purpose”

#910

Post by slenk »

incrudible wrote: post #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.

Is it in good faith when they were already told explicitly to not continue? That's the point where it becomes intentionally malicious IMO
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