Here is your daily dose of WTF. Linux Kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman has called out "researchers" from the University of Minnesota and banned them from submitting code to the Linux Kernel.
This story is pretty wild and completely ridiculous. In the name of some apparent research and a written paper titled, "On the Feasibility of Stealthily Introducing Vulnerabilities in Open-Source Software via Hypocrite Commits", the people involved have now been called out on "sending known-buggy patches to see how the kernel community would react to them".
Part of it goes further, as patches have continued to roll in after the paper was published so they are "continuing to experiment on the kernel community developers by sending such nonsense patches" with the patches not actually doing anything at all. Kroah-Hartman certainly wasn't holding back:
Our community does not appreciate being experimented on, and being "tested" by submitting known patches that are either do nothing on purpose, or introduce bugs on purpose. If you wish to do work like this, I suggest you find a different community to run your experiments on, you are not welcome here.
Because of this, I will now have to ban all future contributions from your University and rip out your previous contributions, as they were obviously submitted in bad-faith with the intent to cause problems.
In a further post Kroah-Hartman sent in a patch to revert a bunch of changes done from the group, so they can go over them fully to ensure they're safe and actually do something.
From a certain point of view, it's nice to know that the Kernel team are good at picking up malicious code and attempts to introduce bugs - but doing this to such a huge important project, live and in the open in the name of research? That's just not right.
Update: so the plot thickens it seems! Sarah Jamie Lewis, the Executive Director of Open Privacy, pointed out on Twitter (be sure to read the thread) that they and others expressed concerns about it in 2020 in a co-signed letter to the IEEE S&P (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy). It really doesn't look good.
Update 2: Leadership in the University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science & Engineering department released a statement on Twitter, noting that it has suspended the research and will be looking into how it got approved in the first place.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: GuestWhat do you call foreign when the subject at hand is Linux kernel development?The BSD crowd.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: Loftyforeign interference ?What do you call foreign when the subject at hand is Linux kernel development?
Actually a good point. I hadn't thought of it like that.
il stick with my first thought on the matter.
Last edited by Lofty on 21 April 2021 at 9:46 pm UTC
Quoting: Alm888I have a research proposition: let's get ourselves a pharmaceutical company and force this company to introduce poison in some of its medications and distribute those poisoned drugs trough common distribution network. In the name of research, of course! I think we must determine the pharmaceutical industry's ability to identify and block malicious drugs!Wasn't that Oxycontin?
HINT: That was a sarcasm.
(No, my mistake--they did that one deliberately)
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 21 April 2021 at 11:04 pm UTC
slaapliedje Apr 21, 2021
Quoting: LoftyEveryday we step closer to the brink of idiocracy.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v435y5TNMjQ
Pretty sure it's already confirmed...
slaapliedje Apr 21, 2021
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: Alm888I have a research proposition: let's get ourselves a pharmaceutical company and force this company to introduce poison in some of its medications and distribute those poisoned drugs trough common distribution network. In the name of research, of course! I think we must determine the pharmaceutical industry's ability to identify and block malicious drugs!Wasn't that Oxycontin?
HINT: That was a sarcasm.
(No, my mistake--they did that one deliberately)
This is where the software used for gamingonlinux needs to have different things besides just a 'like'. As I'd like, laugh, cry and praise this comment!
1) Researchers did it wrong.
2) Linux needs more code quality control in the first place, since the malicious code made its way into mainline and stayed there unnoticed for a long time.
Personally, i don't care much about the former, but the latter scares me and still i notice that everyone is focusing on #1.
Quoting: kokoko3kLinux needs more code quality control in the first place
I think good code reviews are under-appreciated. As someone who spends quite a bit of time reviewing other people's code submissions to see what they need to improve/fix, I can tell you it's way less "fun" than writing code yourself. Sometimes it's interesting to see how someone does something clever, but most of the time it's "should I just rewrite this myself, or take the time to explain why it's wrong?"
Quoting: kokoko3kIf i understood well,there are 2, distinct facts here:
1) Researchers did it wrong.
2) Linux needs more code quality control in the first place, since the malicious code made its way into mainline and stayed there unnoticed for a long time.
Personally, i don't care much about the former, but the latter scares me and still i notice that everyone is focusing on #1.
I think it is both. A reviewer approaches reviews with the mindset that the requester wanted to help and (at least partially) did their home work. Assuming that the general intention is wrong, gives a very different angle to reviews.
Quoting: PhlebiacQuoting: kokoko3kLinux needs more code quality control in the first place
I think good code reviews are under-appreciated. [..]
Quite the contrary, your work is very appreciated, but obviously it is now evident that Linux needs more people like you.
Quoting: jens[..] A reviewer approaches reviews with the mindset that the requester wanted to help and (at least partially) did their home work. Assuming that the general intention is wrong, gives a very different angle to reviews.Unfortunately, that was the point of the research itself.
Putting that way, it is a form of successful social hacking.
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