Overview and Recent Developments: Kernel Self-Protection Project
summary
Shows that KSP lands concrete defenses across kernels 4.14–4.18: vmapped stacks, SLUB freelist obfuscation, structure randomization, set_fs() checking, fast refcount_t protections, PTI and SSB mitigations, usercopy whitelisting, VLA removals and the stackleak plugin. Notes two billion Android devices and historically 5–6 year average CVE lifetimes, cites 7,529 commits (~96 bug fixes) in one stable release as context, and reports overflow helpers and refcount conversions catching real bugs during tree-wide audits. Many features are merged or validated; others need help.
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chapters (25)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:19Context
- 0:49What are we protecting
- 2:20Bug life time
- 3:53git history
- 5:10long tail
- 5:59dirtycow
- 6:20Bugfighting
- 7:27Failure modes
- 8:45Bugs
- 9:31Killing Bug Classes
- 10:24Killing Exploitation
- 11:32Kernel SelfProtection
- 12:55Kernel Releases
- 14:49Specter in Meltdown
- 16:33Refcount Conversions
- 18:21Internal Systems
- 22:06Multiplication Overflows
- 22:59SSB
- 26:07Coming Features
- 28:14Challenges
- 29:23hypervisor
- 29:43hypervisor magic bullet
- 30:50questions
- 31:57GCC plugin support
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