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Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 20:08:36 -0400
From: Dan Rosenberg <dan.j.rosenberg@...il.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Cc: Josh Bressers <bressers@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: Closed list

Hi Josh,

>
> Long term I'd like to see two lists, one for purpose #1, and another geared
> toward #2. I think having a trusted venue for knowledge sharing would be
> very useful, and we likely don't want the list clogged with coordination
> details. This will of course rely heavily on what Openwall is willing to
> take on. They're already taking on a lot of risk and responsibility, I
> don't want to spoil the good will.
>

I agree that having such a venue for discussion would be valuable, and
I'd personally like to contribute to such a list.

>
> Should we require members use a mail address from their vendor? Letting
> people use personal addresses creates an opportunity for people to remain
> on a list when they are no longer a part of a given vendor (it also makes
> it quite easy to know who represents a vendor).
>

Yes, I think this should be a requirement for a closed coordination
list (as opposed to the more relaxed option #2).  In fact, I think
membership to such a list should be restricted almost exclusively to
distributions and downstream providers of third-party software.  It
obviously makes sense to have distro security teams on a list, since a
vulnerability in project XYZ will need to be coordinated among all of
the distros.  However, most software projects only need access to
information concerning their own project.  There's no reason one
software project should gain access to vulnerability information about
a completely unrelated project, and restricting membership to achieve
that will at least help minimize the leakage that went on with the
previous list.

In a nutshell, I think this list needs to decide what its purpose is.
If it's for coordination for vulnerability disclosure, then its
membership should be kept to those who actually need to do the
coordination.  If it's for private (or semi-private) discussion of
potentially sensitive research, knowledge sharing, etc., then its
membership should be expanded to include representation from software
vendors and researchers.

-Dan

>
> Thanks.
>
> --
>    JB
>

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