The situation has echoes of the scholars who a few years back submitted fake papers to journals, some of which passed peer review and were published. That was a

The situation has echoes of the scholars who a few years back submitted fake papers to journals, some of which passed peer review and were published. That was an attempt to backdoor the scientific method, really. I don't condone guerrilla penetration testing whether its on the Linux kernel or a science journal, and I am sure that the ethical implications will be subject to much outrage and debate for some time to come, but when it occurs and is successful it is concerning because if a small team of scholars can do it, so can anyone else. The inner workings of the Linux kernel maintenance has been kind of a black box for me for years, I just naively trust it works and my next update won't compromise my system, so it's concerning that this happened and will be following to see how this plays out.