Hi Greg,
> Who is working on and doing this "reseach project"?
We are a group of researchers from University of California, Riverside
(we introduced ourselves in an earlier email to [email protected] if
you recall). Please allow us to articulate the goal of our research.
We'd be happy to hear your feedback and suggestions.
> And what is it
> doing to actually fix the issues that syzbot finds? Seems like that
> would be a better solution instead of just trying to send emails saying,
> in short "why isn't this reported issue fixed yet?"
From our limited understanding, we know a key problem with syzbot bugs
is that there are too many of them - more than what can be handled by
developers and maintainers. Therefore, it seems some form of
prioritization on bug fixing would be helpful. The goal of the SyzScope
project is to *automatically* analyze the security impact of syzbot
bugs, which helps with prioritizing bug fixes. In other words, when a
syzbot bug is reported, we aim to attach a corresponding security impact
"signal" to help developers make an informed decision on which ones to
fix first.
Currently, SyzScope is a standalone prototype system that we plan to
open source. We hope to keep developing it to make it more and more
useful and have it eventually integrated into syzbot (we are in talks
with Dmitry).
We are happy to talk more offline (perhaps even in a zoom meeting if you
would like). Thanks in advance for any feedback and suggestions you may
have.
On 6/4/2021 2:48 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> On Tue, May 04, 2021 at 02:50:03PM -0700, ETenal wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> This is SyzScope, a research project that aims to reveal high-risk
>> primitives from a seemingly low-risk bug (UAF/OOB read, WARNING, BUG, etc.).
> Who is working on and doing this "reseach project"? And what is it
> doing to actually fix the issues that syzbot finds? Seems like that
> would be a better solution instead of just trying to send emails saying,
> in short "why isn't this reported issue fixed yet?"
>
> thanks,
>
> greg k-h
>
On Fri, Jun 04, 2021 at 10:11:03AM -0700, SyzScope wrote:
> Hi Greg,
>
> > Who is working on and doing this "reseach project"?
> We are a group of researchers from University of California, Riverside (we
> introduced ourselves in an earlier email to [email protected] if you
> recall).
I do not recall that, sorry, when was that?
>?Please allow us to articulate the goal of our research. We'd be
> happy to hear your feedback and suggestions.
>
> > And what is it
> > doing to actually fix the issues that syzbot finds? Seems like that
> > would be a better solution instead of just trying to send emails saying,
> > in short "why isn't this reported issue fixed yet?"
> From our limited understanding, we know a key problem with syzbot bugs is
> that there are too many of them - more than what can be handled by
> developers and maintainers. Therefore, it seems some form of prioritization
> on bug fixing would be helpful. The goal of the SyzScope project is to
> *automatically* analyze the security impact of syzbot bugs, which helps with
> prioritizing bug fixes. In other words, when a syzbot bug is reported, we
> aim to attach a corresponding security impact "signal" to help developers
> make an informed decision on which ones to fix first.
Is that really the reason why syzbot-reported problems are not being
fixed? Just because we don't know which ones are more "important"?
As someone who has been managing many interns for a year or so working
on these, I do not think that is the problem, but hey, what do I know...
> Currently,? SyzScope is a standalone prototype system that we plan to open
> source. We hope to keep developing it to make it more and more useful and
> have it eventually integrated into syzbot (we are in talks with Dmitry).
>
> We are happy to talk more offline (perhaps even in a zoom meeting if you
> would like). Thanks in advance for any feedback and suggestions you may
> have.
Meetings are not really how kernel development works, sorry.
At the moment, these emails really do not seem all that useful, trying
to tell other people what to do does not get you very far when dealing
with people who you have no "authority" over...
Technical solutions to human issues almost never work, however writing a
procmail filter to keep me from having to see these will work quite well :)
good luck!
greg k-h