Security Research by Kicksecure

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Design Design Dev/compiler hardening Previous page: Design Index page: Design Next page: Dev/compiler hardening Security Research by Kicksecure

• Project Activities
• Research
• Progress Reports
• Why Freedom Software / Open Source
• Contributors
• Mission and Vision
• Contribute

This page tracks security research and vulnerability reports contributed by Kicksecure, including links to upstream bug reports and internal research notes.

Security Vulnerability Bug Reports

Security issue reports filed at other projects.

Public

• Local privilege escalation via zuluPolkit, caused by Debian patch

Pending publication

• upstream A
  • bug A
    • initial report date: 2026-02-01
    • intended publication date: 2026-05-03
    • no patch yet
• upstream B
  • bug A
    • initial report date: 2026-01-30
    • intended publication date: 2026-05-01
    • public patch available, pending security advisory
• upstream C
  • bug A
    • initial report date: 2025-12-23
    • intended publication date: 2026-03-24
    • no patch yet
    • upstream notified of disclosure date
• upstream D
  • bug A
    • initial report date: 2026-02-25
    • intended publication date: 2026-05-27
    • no patch yet

Security Research

Practical defensive security research: hardening work, threat modeling, and attack surface analysis. Synthesis of Linux distribution maintainer oriented decision making, security engineering, and maintainability considerations.

Design pages: Security research triage (in progress)

Page	Short summary	Type
Strong Linux User Account Isolation	Overview of Linux user and root separation, attack vectors, and default and optional hardening measures.	Research
Verified Boot	Explains verified boot and chain of trust goals, advantages, limitations, and implementation considerations.	Research
ram-wipe / Dev/RAM Wipe	Research and implementation of a dracut module that wipes RAM on shutdown.	Research
Entropy	Technical discussion of entropy sources and randomness topics.	Research
remount-secure	Hardening proposal for secure mount options and a maintainable way for a distribution to apply them.	Research
Compiler Hardening	Overview of compiler hardening flags and link time options for GCC and Clang, focusing on exploit mitigation and diagnostics.	Notepad
About Computer (In)Security	Broad background notes and examples about computer insecurity and related concepts.	Essay
Trusting Kicksecure	Trust model discussion (backdoors, signatures, image verification) and how to place trust in the supply chain.	Essay
Secure Boot	Critical discussion of Secure Boot design tradeoffs, threat model, and limitations for user controlled trust currently on Intel/AMD64.	Summary
Factory Reset, Stateless Systems, Anti-Hysteresis	Discussion of stateless and anti-hysteresis systems, upgrades and rollback risks, and links to related immutable approaches.	Notepad
apt-revoker	Proposal for tooling to revoke compromised APT signing keys.	Design
Stable vs Rolling Distributions - Security Analysis	Security analysis of stable and rolling release models.	Analysis
Permanent Takedown Attack Defender	Proposal to keep project metadata and update communication resilient against takedown, rollback, and freeze attacks, with Tor and signature considerations.	Design
Confidential Computing	Survey and threat model notes around encrypted RAM and remote attestation technologies for cloud and hardware trust.	Survey
vm-app-manager	Proposal for a virtualization based application sandbox with reduced VM escape surface and user controllable isolation features.	Notepad

Pages marked "Notepad" are security relevant working notes or drafts that likely need more structure or completion before being presented as finished security research. Pages marked "Essay" are mostly conceptual discussion.

Privacy and Anonymity Research

See Whonix research.

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Kicksecure is proudly supported until 2026 by Power Up Privacy, a privacy advocacy group that seeks to supercharge privacy projects with resources so they can complete their mission of making our world a better place. (Strictly subject to our sponsorship policy.)

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