Does anyone know what their "business reason" for doing research like this is? (not that a business reason should be needed, but like I said, I'm a bit surprised to see it here)
Semmle built CodeQL, now offered by GitHub (https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/code-scanning/intro...), which GitHub and Microsoft (see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/2023/11/02/ann...) want to associate with "deep security insight".
So they continue to fund this kind of novel security research, for which security practitioners across industry are grateful.
I think it's basically basic research [0]. In first order reasoning, github, as a product doesn't really need android security experts. But employing them has some potential long-term benefits.
Man Yue Mo is a security researcher who finds some of the most complex and impactful bugs in the industry like crbug.com/40065473
Although, it wouldn’t be abnormal for a security team to have free time, and dedicate it to researching an emerging technology whether it directly contributes to the business goals or not. Of course I’m not talking about a security team that is reading log files from their SIEM while sitting in a SOC.
I’ll paste:
Why does GitHub Security Lab do research like @mmolgtm’s recent work on bypassing MTE on the Pixel 8? This question was asked on Hacker News and we think it’s worth a short thread. news.ycombinator.com/item?id=397522…
First an important point: we only research open source code, which means that many parts of your phone (for example most of your apps) are out-of-scope for us. That said, all open source code is in-scope, including projects that aren’t hosted on GitHub. (Quote tweet reply to this tweet [2])
In this particular case, @mmolgtm found a bug in Arm Mali, which is an open source GPU driver used on many Android phones. Android itself is open source. https://developer.arm.com/downloads/-/mali-drivers/valhall-k...
Open source software is the foundation of much of the world’s software. So when open source wins, we win. And that’s why @GitHub takes its responsibility seriously, to help make open source software more secure.
GitHub Security Lab sits within @GitHubSecurity, and we focus exclusively on open source security with four main priorities:
First, we run the GitHub Advisory Database, which is a comprehensive database of open source vulnerabilities. https://t.co/U4HlXO2l1G
Second, we share information around secure coding practices, through blogs and video content. https://t.co/EdO5SZtR0B
Third, we use GitHub’s CodeQL to scan thousands of open source repositories for common security mistakes, like SQL injections or path traversals. https://t.co/m72rt2a5RL
And fourth, we do deep research on critical open source projects. @mmolgtm’s recent work on Arm Mail is an example of this. https://t.co/jxVYeoJjtO
The work that we do feeds into GitHub’s security products. For example, the advisory database is used to generate Dependabot alerts. https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/dependabot/dependab...
Similarly, our work with CodeQL provides feedback to the code scanning team to help improve and further develop the feature so that more vulnerabilities are caught quickly and automatically. https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/code-scanning/intro...
And these activities also benefit open source, because GitHub security products, including Dependabot and CodeQL, are free for open source projects!
Our deep research work is primarily intended to inspire the community, so that we can improve open source security together. That’s why we publish detailed blog posts and proof-of-concept exploits.
https://github.com/github/securitylab/tree/main/SecurityExpl...
We’re big believers in Linus's law: “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”. Together, we’re making open source software secure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus%27s_law