linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 000/190] Revertion of all of the umn.edu commits

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Date:   Wed, 21 Apr 2021 06:56:49 -0700
From:   Guenter Roeck <linux@...ck-us.net>
To:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Aditya Pakki <pakki001@....edu>, Kangjie Lu <kjlu@....edu>,
        Qiushi Wu <wu000273@....edu>, x86@...nel.org,
        Bjorn Helgaas <bhelgaas@...gle.com>,
        "Rafael J. Wysocki" <rjw@...ysocki.net>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, David Airlie <airlied@...ux.ie>,
        Michael Turquette <mturquette@...libre.com>,
        Bjorn Andersson <bjorn.andersson@...aro.org>,
        Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@...aro.org>,
        Bartosz Golaszewski <bgolaszewski@...libre.com>,
        Daniel Vetter <daniel@...ll.ch>,
        Jean Delvare <jdelvare@...e.com>,
        Jiri Kosina <jikos@...nel.org>, Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Laurent Pinchart <laurent.pinchart@...asonboard.com>,
        Jakub Kicinski <kuba@...nel.org>,
        "David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
        Johan Hovold <johan@...nel.org>,
        Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@...nel.org>,
        Pablo Neira Ayuso <pablo@...filter.org>,
        Johannes Berg <johannes@...solutions.net>,
        Takashi Iwai <tiwai@...e.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 000/190] Revertion of all of the umn.edu commits

On 4/21/21 5:57 AM, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> I have been meaning to do this for a while, but recent events have
> finally forced me to do so.
> 
> Commits from @umn.edu addresses have been found to be submitted in "bad
> faith" to try to test the kernel community's ability to review "known
> malicious" changes.  The result of these submissions can be found in a
> paper published at the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy
> entitled, "Open Source Insecurity: Stealthily Introducing
> Vulnerabilities via Hypocrite Commits" written by Qiushi Wu (University
> of Minnesota) and Kangjie Lu (University of Minnesota).
> 

Sigh. As if this wouldn't be a problem everywhere.

> Because of this, all submissions from this group must be reverted from
> the kernel tree and will need to be re-reviewed again to determine if
> they actually are a valid fix.  Until that work is complete, remove this
> change to ensure that no problems are being introduced into the
> codebase.
> 
> This patchset has the "easy" reverts, there are 68 remaining ones that
> need to be manually reviewed.  Some of them are not able to be reverted
> as they already have been reverted, or fixed up with follow-on patches
> as they were determined to be invalid.  Proof that these submissions
> were almost universally wrong.
> 
> I will be working with some other kernel developers to determine if any
> of these reverts were actually valid changes, were actually valid, and
> if so, will resubmit them properly later.  For now, it's better to be
> safe.
> 
> I'll take this through my tree, so no need for any maintainer to worry
> about this, but they should be aware that future submissions from anyone
> with a umn.edu address should be by default-rejected unless otherwise
> determined to actually be a valid fix (i.e. they provide proof and you
> can verify it, but really, why waste your time doing that extra work?)
> 
> thanks,
> 
> greg k-h
> 
[ ... ]
>   Revert "hwmon: (lm80) fix a missing check of bus read in lm80 probe"

I see

9aa3aa15f4c2 hwmon: (lm80) fix a missing check of bus read in lm80 probe
c9c63915519b hwmon: (lm80) fix a missing check of the status of SMBus read

The latter indeed introduced a problem which was later fixed with

07bd14ccc304 hwmon: (lm80) Fix missing unlock on error in set_fan_div()

I guess that was part of the experiment. I don't see a problem with the
patch that is being reverted, but it is not extremely valuable either,
so I don't mind the revert. It is not valuable enough to re-apply it later
either.

FWIW, I didn't see the problem with the second patch even when re-reviewing
it, which makes me suspect that they introduced missing-unlock problems on
purpose. It is important to keep that in mind when re-reviewing the patches.
Also, it may be part of the pattern that they introduced one or more valid
patches followed by a malicious one into the same subsystem on purpose.

Guenter