Kees Cook

Free Software Hacker

Last Notes

2026-03-24 06:31:30 UTC

We can remove strncpy() from the Linux kernel finally! I did the last 6 instances, and dropped all the implementations:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kees/linux.git/log/?h=dev/v7.0-rc2/strncpy
Over the last 6 years working on this, there were 362 commits by 70 contributors. The folks with more than 1 commit were:
211 Justin Stitt <justinstitt@google.com>
22 Xu Panda <xu.panda@zte.com.cn>
21 Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org>
17 Thorsten Blum <thorsten.blum@linux.dev>
12 Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>
4 Pranav Tyagi <pranav.tyagi03@gmail.com>
4 Lee Jones <lee@kernel.org>
2 Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
2 Sam Ravnborg <sam@ravnborg.org>
2 Marcelo Moreira <marcelomoreira1905@gmail.com>
2 Krzysztof Kozlowski <krzk@kernel.org>
2 Kalle Valo <kvalo@kernel.org>
2 Jaroslav Kysela <perex@perex.cz>
2 Daniel Thompson <danielt@kernel.org>
2 Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
Thank you to all of you! (And especially to Justin Stitt who took on the brunt of the work.)

2025-12-25 00:21:03 UTC

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@nprofile…tq3v The "continue to function properly" language came from Vizio, though. That's not a claim SFC ever made. That wouldn't even be covered by GPLv3. 🤷
https://sfconservancy.org/news/2025/dec/24/vizio-msa-irrelevant-ruling/

2025-12-01 16:27:52 UTC

When a kernel commit starts with "In A.D. 1582 Pope Gregory XIII found that ..." you know you're in for a ride:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=f076ef44a44d02ed91543f820c14c2c7dff53716
tl;dr: Rockchip decided November should have 31 days...

2025-11-08 00:43:05 UTC

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@nprofile…gkm9 I think you mean the yellow circle ("publicly know flaws") where it is outside the green circle ("fixed flaws") and pink circle ("security flaws")? Does that match?

2025-11-06 03:18:53 UTC

Today is also the 10 year anniversary of the Linux Kernel Self-Protection Project. https://kspp.github.io/
I'm proud that we've gotten A LOT done in the last decade to harden Linux against security flaws.
I posted this before, but here's a review of the last ten years:
https://outflux.net/slides/2025/lss/kspp-decade.pdf
And the video:
https://youtu.be/c_NxzSRG50g

2025-11-05 17:09:33 UTC

Happy 70th birthday to the Flux Capacitor!
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/115/498/186/554/939/357/original/210106bf3269ea88.mp4

2025-06-26 17:45:19 UTC

This graph is the one I'm most excited about: the lifetime of security flaws in Linux is finally starting to get shorter (and the number of fixed flaws continues to rise).
https://hachyderm.io/@LinuxSecSummit@social.kernel.org/114750428620118674
https://media.hachyderm.io/media_attachments/files/114/750/908/087/006/458/original/e0cfd3d62a9ae344.jpg