Comment by dsr_
4 years ago
The difference between:
"Dear GK-H: I would like to have my students test the security of the kernel development process. Here is my first stab at a protocol, can we work on this?"
and
"We're going to see if we can introduce bugs into the Linux kernel, and probably tell them afterwards"
is the difference between white-hat and black-hat.
It should probably be a private email to Linus Torvalds (or someone in his near chain of patch acceptance), that way some easy to scan for key can be introduced in all patches. Then the top levels can see what actually made it through review, and in turn figure out who isn't reviewing as well as they should.
Yes, someone like Greg K-H. I'm not up to date on the details, but he should be one of most important 5 people caring for the kernel tree, this would've been the exact person to seek approval.