From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1755898AbYDXO1K (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:27:10 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752242AbYDXO0y (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:26:54 -0400 Received: from mail.syneticon.net ([213.239.212.131]:35374 "EHLO mail2.syneticon.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751211AbYDXO0x (ORCPT ); Thu, 24 Apr 2008 10:26:53 -0400 Message-ID: <481098A4.50107@wpkg.org> Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:26:44 +0200 From: Tomasz Chmielewski User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (X11/20080305) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: LKML , jbarnold@MIT.EDU, francois.cami@free.fr, Andi Kleen , mail@earthworm.de Subject: Re: A system for rebootless kernel security updates Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Jeff Arnold wrote: > I've put together an automatic system for applying kernel security patches > to the Linux kernel without rebooting it, and I wanted to share this > system with the community in case others find it useful or interesting. Hmm, the idea seem to be patented by Microsoft, i.e. this patent from December 2002: http://www.google.com/patents?id=cVyWAAAAEBAJ&dq=hotpatching (and other patents by Microsoft if you search for "hotpatching"). And those patent descriptions, by the way, remind the way kexec works ("A software module is hotpatched by loading a patch into memory and modifying an instruction in the original module to jump to the patch"), which was released much earlier... In essence, they patented kexec ;) -- Tomasz Chmielewski http://wpkg.org