On Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 10:07:03AM +0100, Dmitry Vyukov wrote: > I suspect the bulk of the reports are coming from academia > researchers. In lots of academia papers based on syzkaller I see "we > also reported X bugs to the upstream kernel". Somehow there seems to > be a preference to keep things secret before publication, so upstream > syzbot integration is problematic. Though it is well possible to > publish papers based on OSS work, these usually tend to be higher > quality and have better evaluation. > > I also don't fully understand the value of "we also reported X bugs to > the upstream kernel" for research papers. There is little correlation > with the quality/novelty of research. Oh, that's easy. Statements make it more likely that program committee members will more likely accept the paper because it's "real world impact". And if you're an academic, it's publish or perish, because due to the gamification of tenure track committees. Apparently in some countries the pressure is so huge that academics have started submit fake/sham papers: The startling rise in the publication of sham science papers has its roots in China, where young doctors and scientists seeking promotion were required to have published scientific papers. Shadow organisations – known as “paper mills” – began to supply fabricated work for publication in journals there. The practice has since spread to India, Iran, Russia, former Soviet Union states and eastern Europe, with paper mills supplying fabricated studies to more and more journals as increasing numbers of young scientists try to boost their careers by claiming false research experience. In some cases, journal editors have been bribed to accept articles, while paper mills have managed to establish their own agents as guest editors who then allow reams of falsified work to be published. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/03/the-situation-has-become-appalling-fake-scientific-papers-push-research-credibility-to-crisis-point At least in this case it appears to be real syzkaller reports, although if they were submitting sham papers to sham journals, they at least wouldn't be wasting upstream kernel developers' time. :-) It would be *nice* if researchers at *least* checked to see if their reports had already been discovered using an unmodified Syzkaller (for example, by checking the upstream Syzbot web pages). After all, if the unmodified/upstream Syzkaller can find the problem, in addition to wasting our time even more, it's *clearly* not a new/novel result. - Ted P.S. If you want to push back on this nonsense, Usenix program committee chairs are very much looking for open source professionals to participate on the program committees for Usenix ATC (Annual Technical Conference) and FAST (File System and Storage Technologies) conference. It's a huge amount of work; easily 40-60 hours of work over 3-4 months. But it does get you to see what academics are up to, and it's a way to help point out bogus research, and to push back on research groups using ancient kernels (typically whatever kernel was current when the lead professor was a graduate student).... If you're interested, I can put you in touch with some of those Program Committee chairs when they are asking me to serve --- there's more than enough opportunity to go around. :-)
