[weagle05]

I think we disagree on the bigger problem. In my view the bigger problem is the erosion of trust for open source. Over the last 10-ish years there has been a flood of research and marketing around open source software security. I wrote a white paper about it back in 2011. We know there are risks in open source and we know vulnerabilities are created both intentionally and accidentally. We also know open source maintainers are overworked and human. There will be mistakes and we must prepare for them. This is the reason why the fine folks at Sonatype, Snyk, and WhiteSource have jobs.

These grad students wanted to make a splash and went after one of the most important code bases on the planet. It stopped being an ethical problem when the kernel maintainers had to manually search for vulnerabilities. They are using hours that could be used elsewhere. The Linux Foundation is paying Greg Kroah-Hartman to solve this problem, so they have a financial loss due to the actions of these grad students. There's your civil liability. They "knowingly cause(d) the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer" so there's your criminal liability from the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. There's probably criminal liability in the state where they live as well.