In the past, when GrapheneOS was in a better state, the latest kernel.org LTS branches were promptly merged along with additional fixes not included in the upstream branches. The fix for the bug now assigned CVE-2019-2215 was already applied for the Pixel 1 and 2.
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Unfortunately, due to lack of resources and support, it hasn't yet been possible to start doing this for the ongoing revival of the project. In the past, I used to do it myself, but don't have the time and energy available anymore and people aren't stepping up to fill that gap.
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It was never possible for me to get done more than a fraction of what the project aimed to do by myself. The ongoing attacks by malicious people have taken away a lot of my time / energy and I'm not able to do everything that I did before. Lots of past work needs to be restored.
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In general, the Linux kernel does not assign a CVE when fixing a security vulnerability. That's the case for most open source projects. It's important to use the latest revision of LTS branches and apply more fixes on top of that. Other than that there aren't really good answers.
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The newer kernel branches have lots of new vulnerabilities and attack surface. It's not clear if vulnerabilities are even being fixed at a faster rate than they're being added. Similarly, it's unclear if ongoing hardening work outweighs endless new attack surface / complexity.
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I've talked about these issues a lot, and in a lot of depth. I recommend watching this talk to help with understanding the scale of the issues and the sorry state of software engineering not just in the Linux kernel but most other major software projects:
youtube.com/watch?v=qrBVXx
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The Linux kernel uses a fundamentally insecure architecture, insecure tools, and has a development culture treating correctness and especially security as an afterthought. It ultimately needs to replaced, but until then, best effort approaches minimizing the harm are important.
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There's supposed to be a stable-base branch with all of the LTS kernel patches cherry picked on top of the AOSP kernel branch for the device. Every month, it needs to be rebased on top of the new AOSP kernel tag. They eventually merge these changes in quarterly / yearly releases.
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