Finding Linux Bugs Before they Become Exploits

“It’s not everyday that there is a public security exploit
published for the Linux kernel, yet that is what happened in early
July. Though the flaw itself was patched in the mainline Linux
kernel several weeks prior to the public exploit code being
published, not all users may have patched. It could have been a lot
worse.

“The issue of patching aside, the public exploit could easily
have been a zero day exploit on the Linux kernel itself, were it
not for the fact that the bug that enables the exploit was caught
by a scan from code scanning vendor Coverity. The Linux kernel has
been actively scanned by Coverity since at least 2004 in an effort
to find bugs and improve code quality.

“”Our builds were broken in February and March so we didn’t see
it immediately when the code was first committed,” David Maxwell,
open source strategist for Coverity told InternetNews.com “But
we’ve had it flagged in the system since March and it was fixed on
the fifth of July.”

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