mirror of
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git
synced 2024-08-26 02:39:48 +00:00
![Kees Cook](/assets/img/avatar_default.png)
As a follow-up to the UMN incident[1], the TAB took the responsibility to document Researcher Guidelines so there would be a common place to point for describing our expectations as a developer community. Document best practices researchers should follow to participate successfully with the Linux developer community. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/202105051005.49BFABCE@keescook/ Co-developed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> Co-developed-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Co-developed-by: Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@upsilon.cc> Signed-off-by: Stefano Zacchiroli <zack@upsilon.cc> Co-developed-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> Signed-off-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> Acked-by: Steve Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> Acked-by: Laura Abbott <labbott@kernel.org> Reviewed-by: Julia Lawall <julia.lawall@inria.fr> Reviewed-by: Wenwen Wang <wenwen@cs.uga.edu> Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220304181418.1692016-1-keescook@chromium.org Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
143 lines
6.9 KiB
ReStructuredText
143 lines
6.9 KiB
ReStructuredText
.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
|
|
|
|
.. _researcher_guidelines:
|
|
|
|
Researcher Guidelines
|
|
+++++++++++++++++++++
|
|
|
|
The Linux kernel community welcomes transparent research on the Linux
|
|
kernel, the activities involved in producing it, and any other byproducts
|
|
of its development. Linux benefits greatly from this kind of research, and
|
|
most aspects of Linux are driven by research in one form or another.
|
|
|
|
The community greatly appreciates if researchers can share preliminary
|
|
findings before making their results public, especially if such research
|
|
involves security. Getting involved early helps both improve the quality
|
|
of research and ability for Linux to improve from it. In any case,
|
|
sharing open access copies of the published research with the community
|
|
is recommended.
|
|
|
|
This document seeks to clarify what the Linux kernel community considers
|
|
acceptable and non-acceptable practices when conducting such research. At
|
|
the very least, such research and related activities should follow
|
|
standard research ethics rules. For more background on research ethics
|
|
generally, ethics in technology, and research of developer communities
|
|
in particular, see:
|
|
|
|
* `History of Research Ethics <https://www.unlv.edu/research/ORI-HSR/history-ethics>`_
|
|
* `IEEE Ethics <https://www.ieee.org/about/ethics/index.html>`_
|
|
* `Developer and Researcher Views on the Ethics of Experiments on Open-Source Projects <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2112.13217.pdf>`_
|
|
|
|
The Linux kernel community expects that everyone interacting with the
|
|
project is participating in good faith to make Linux better. Research on
|
|
any publicly-available artifact (including, but not limited to source
|
|
code) produced by the Linux kernel community is welcome, though research
|
|
on developers must be distinctly opt-in.
|
|
|
|
Passive research that is based entirely on publicly available sources,
|
|
including posts to public mailing lists and commits to public
|
|
repositories, is clearly permissible. Though, as with any research,
|
|
standard ethics must still be followed.
|
|
|
|
Active research on developer behavior, however, must be done with the
|
|
explicit agreement of, and full disclosure to, the individual developers
|
|
involved. Developers cannot be interacted with/experimented on without
|
|
consent; this, too, is standard research ethics.
|
|
|
|
To help clarify: sending patches to developers *is* interacting
|
|
with them, but they have already consented to receiving *good faith
|
|
contributions*. Sending intentionally flawed/vulnerable patches or
|
|
contributing misleading information to discussions is not consented
|
|
to. Such communication can be damaging to the developer (e.g. draining
|
|
time, effort, and morale) and damaging to the project by eroding
|
|
the entire developer community's trust in the contributor (and the
|
|
contributor's organization as a whole), undermining efforts to provide
|
|
constructive feedback to contributors, and putting end users at risk of
|
|
software flaws.
|
|
|
|
Participation in the development of Linux itself by researchers, as
|
|
with anyone, is welcomed and encouraged. Research into Linux code is
|
|
a common practice, especially when it comes to developing or running
|
|
analysis tools that produce actionable results.
|
|
|
|
When engaging with the developer community, sending a patch has
|
|
traditionally been the best way to make an impact. Linux already has
|
|
plenty of known bugs -- what's much more helpful is having vetted fixes.
|
|
Before contributing, carefully read the appropriate documentation:
|
|
|
|
* Documentation/process/development-process.rst
|
|
* Documentation/process/submitting-patches.rst
|
|
* Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst
|
|
* Documentation/admin-guide/security-bugs.rst
|
|
|
|
Then send a patch (including a commit log with all the details listed
|
|
below) and follow up on any feedback from other developers.
|
|
|
|
When sending patches produced from research, the commit logs should
|
|
contain at least the following details, so that developers have
|
|
appropriate context for understanding the contribution. Answer:
|
|
|
|
* What is the specific problem that has been found?
|
|
* How could the problem be reached on a running system?
|
|
* What effect would encountering the problem have on the system?
|
|
* How was the problem found? Specifically include details about any
|
|
testing, static or dynamic analysis programs, and any other tools or
|
|
methods used to perform the work.
|
|
* Which version of Linux was the problem found on? Using the most recent
|
|
release or a recent linux-next branch is strongly preferred (see
|
|
Documentation/process/howto.rst).
|
|
* What was changed to fix the problem, and why it is believed to be correct?
|
|
* How was the change build tested and run-time tested?
|
|
* What prior commit does this change fix? This should go in a "Fixes:"
|
|
tag as the documentation describes.
|
|
* Who else has reviewed this patch? This should go in appropriate
|
|
"Reviewed-by:" tags; see below.
|
|
|
|
For example::
|
|
|
|
From: Author <author@email>
|
|
Subject: [PATCH] drivers/foo_bar: Add missing kfree()
|
|
|
|
The error path in foo_bar driver does not correctly free the allocated
|
|
struct foo_bar_info. This can happen if the attached foo_bar device
|
|
rejects the initialization packets sent during foo_bar_probe(). This
|
|
would result in a 64 byte slab memory leak once per device attach,
|
|
wasting memory resources over time.
|
|
|
|
This flaw was found using an experimental static analysis tool we are
|
|
developing, LeakMagic[1], which reported the following warning when
|
|
analyzing the v5.15 kernel release:
|
|
|
|
path/to/foo_bar.c:187: missing kfree() call?
|
|
|
|
Add the missing kfree() to the error path. No other references to
|
|
this memory exist outside the probe function, so this is the only
|
|
place it can be freed.
|
|
|
|
x86_64 and arm64 defconfig builds with CONFIG_FOO_BAR=y using GCC
|
|
11.2 show no new warnings, and LeakMagic no longer warns about this
|
|
code path. As we don't have a FooBar device to test with, no runtime
|
|
testing was able to be performed.
|
|
|
|
[1] https://url/to/leakmagic/details
|
|
|
|
Reported-by: Researcher <researcher@email>
|
|
Fixes: aaaabbbbccccdddd ("Introduce support for FooBar")
|
|
Signed-off-by: Author <author@email>
|
|
Reviewed-by: Reviewer <reviewer@email>
|
|
|
|
If you are a first time contributor it is recommended that the patch
|
|
itself be vetted by others privately before being posted to public lists.
|
|
(This is required if you have been explicitly told your patches need
|
|
more careful internal review.) These people are expected to have their
|
|
"Reviewed-by" tag included in the resulting patch. Finding another
|
|
developer familiar with Linux contribution, especially within your own
|
|
organization, and having them help with reviews before sending them to
|
|
the public mailing lists tends to significantly improve the quality of the
|
|
resulting patches, and there by reduces the burden on other developers.
|
|
|
|
If no one can be found to internally review patches and you need
|
|
help finding such a person, or if you have any other questions
|
|
related to this document and the developer community's expectations,
|
|
please reach out to the private Technical Advisory Board mailing list:
|
|
<tech-board@lists.linux-foundation.org>.
|