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0 pointsblippage4y ago0 comments

Undoubtedly I am in the minority here, but I think it's less a question of ethics, and more a question of bad judgement. You just don't submit vulnerabilities into the kernel and then say "hey, I just deliberately submitted a security vulnerability".

The chief problem here is not that it bruises the egos of the Linux developers for being psyched, but that it was a dick move whereby people now have to spend time sorting this shit out.

Prof Liu miscalculated. The Linux developers are not some randos off the street where you can pay them a few bucks for a day in the lab, and then they go away and get on with whatever they were doing beforehand. It's a whole community. And he just pissed them off.

It is right that Linux developers impose a social sanction on the perpetrators.

It has quite possibly ruined the student's chances of ever getting a PhD, and earned Liu a rocket up the arse.

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dwheeler4y ago

> it's less a question of ethics, and more a question of bad judgement.

I disagree. I think it's easier to excuse bad judgment, in part because we all sometimes make mistakes in complicated situations.

But this is an example of experimenting on humans without their consent. Greg KH specifically noted that the developers did not appreciate being experimented on. That is a huge chasm of a line to cross. You are generally required to get consent before experimenting on humans, and that did not happen. That's not just bad judgment. The whole point of the IRB system is to prevent stuff like that.

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