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Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2021 09:59:02 -0600
From: "Jeremy Soller" <jeremy@...tem76.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Pop!_OS Membership to linux-distros list

On Tue, Jul 27, 2021, at 11:59 AM, Solar Designer wrote:
> Hi Jeremy,
> 
> On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 02:23:26PM -0600, Jeremy Soller wrote:
> > 3. Have a publicly verifiable track record, dating back at least 1 year and
> > continuing to present day, of fixing security issues (including some that had
> > been handled on (linux-)distros, meaning that membership would have been
> > relevant to you) and releasing the fixes within 10 days (and preferably much
> > less than that) of the issues being made public (if it takes you ages to fix an
> > issue, your users wouldn't substantially benefit from the additional time,
> > often around 7 days and sometimes up to 14 days, that list membership could
> > give you)
> > 
> > Over the history of Pop!_OS, dating back to 2017, we have maintained critical
> > packages and applied security patches soon after they are made public. Our
> > membership to this list would significantly help our users stay secure by
> > allowing us to prepare and test security updates ahead of public disclosure.
> > Please see our GitHub organization for more evidence: https://github.com/pop-os
> 
> I think it'd be most convincing for us all to see specific examples of
> you having "applied security patches soon after they are made public",
> with dates public vs. fixed in Pop!_OS.

How many examples should I provide? The last security patch I did was for
systemd. We have patches on systemd which means we cannot use the Ubuntu
version directly, so when, for example, CVE-2020-13529 and CVE-2021-33910
patches arrived in Ubuntu 21.04 on July 20, 2021, I applied them to our own
fork of systemd for Pop!_OS 21.04 that same day:

- https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/247.3-3ubuntu3.4
- https://github.com/pop-os/systemd/commit/bf008f836b8740f6634d02526d1f38c98fa6699a

Pop!_OS needs to participate in linux-distros to ensure we have patches ready
for our forks of packages that do not come straight from Ubuntu. I listed the
relevant packages in my original email, many of which we have had to do
security updates for after some embargo lifts, with very little time to prepare.

> > 7. Be able and willing to contribute back (see above), preferably in specific
> > ways announced in advance (so that you're responsible for a specific area and
> > so that we know what to expect from which member), and demonstrate actual
> > contributions once you've been a member for a while
> > 
> > I am able and willing to contribute back.
> 
> Please choose a specific task (or several).
> 
> I suggest the statistics task:
> 
> "13. Keep track of per-report and per-issue handling and disclosure
> timelines (at least times of notification of the private list and of
> actual public disclosure), at regular intervals produce and share
> statistics (most notably, the average embargo duration) as well as the
> raw data (except on issues that are still under embargo) by posting to
> oss-security - primary: Amazon, backup: Gentoo"
> 
> As you can see, it is currently assigned to Amazon and Gentoo, but as
> far as I can see neither is actually handling it now, so I'd like to
> formally unassign it from them and have another distro handle it.

That would be fine, but I would be curious if there is some reason they have
not been fulfilling this task.
 
> > 9. Have someone already on the private list, or at least someone else who has
> > been active on oss-security for years but is not affiliated with your distro
> > nor your organization, vouch for at least one of the people requesting
> > membership on behalf of your distro (then that one vouched-for person will be
> > able to vouch for others on your team, in case you'd like multiple people
> > subscribed)
> > 
> > I do not know if I have contacts that are already on the linux-distros list.
> 
> It can also be "someone else who has been active on oss-security for
> years but is not affiliated".  Anyone?

I believe Tyler Hicks is willing to do this.

> Thanks,
> 
> Alexander
> 

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