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Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2011 20:08:23 -0500
From: Dan Rosenberg <dan.j.rosenberg@...il.com>
To: Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>
Cc: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com, Kees Cook <kees@...ntu.com>
Subject: Re: Vendor-sec hosting and future of closed lists
On Thu, Mar 3, 2011 at 7:41 PM, Greg KH <greg@...ah.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 07:26:21PM -0500, Dan Rosenberg wrote:
>> >>
>> >> Rather than requiring individuals to perform substantial amounts of
>> >> digging through patches, which I agree is infeasible, perhaps it would
>> >> be more reasonable to establish a general policy that bug reporters
>> >> and maintainers can use to work with distro security teams and the
>> >> rest of the security community.
>> >>
>> >> For example, a public or private list could be established for all
>> >> *potential* kernel security issues, and just as is the case with
>> >> CC'ing stable, a policy could be developed where maintainers are
>> >> expected to CC this list for fixes that might possibly have security
>> >> relevance, with a tendency towards erring on the safe side if security
>> >> impact is unclear.
>> >
>> > This proposal just fell down right there, as it has been rightly pointed
>> > out that numerous bug fixes in the kernel in the past have later been
>> > deemed "security fixes". So what you are asking for is for _all_
>> > bugfixes to be sent to such a list.
>> >
>> > Well, we have that already, we have mailing lists that get every single
>> > patch that is merged into the kernel, and there's the big lkml list as
>> > well with hundreds of fixes posted every week.
>> >
>>
>> Of course failing to anticipate security impact is bound to happen in
>> the kernel; it frequently happens in userland too, and is unavoidable.
>> That doesn't mean we can't try, and it doesn't mean we should be
>> overly paranoid and have security folks manually audit every patch.
>> Currently, maintainers and bug reporters are expected to ask
>> themselves a simple question when deciding whether or not to CC
>> stable: "does this fix a bug or security issue, or is it a new
>> feature?". Similarly, I don't think it's too much to ask for people
>> to consider the question of "does this bug it allow an unprivileged
>> user to crash the system, gain additional access, or otherwise cross
>> privilege boundaries?" And if the answer is "I don't know, maybe?",
>> then they should CC this list to be safe. I think this would result
>> in not nearly as much volume as you're anticipating.
>
> They do this already today, that's what security@...nel.org is for, and
> it gets a bit of traffic like this every week.
>
> I actually use that traffic to watch out for things that need to make
> sure they go into the stable releases. Those patches are then posted to
> stable@...nel.org when they are public, so you can watch that list if
> you want.
>
The difference is that distributions and the security community do not
have access to the security@...nel.org list. The goal here to is
bridge that communication gap - perhaps what's really needed is
allowing more representation on the existing list and clarifying and
encouraging policies for when CC'ing security@...nel.org is
appropriate, especially in regards to on-the-fence issues. If
everyone were a bit more conscientious about e-mailing
security@...nel.org when appropriate and that list had better
representation from people who can actually coordinate with various
downstream vendors, that would be an improvement.
>> >> I think security communication needs to be
>> >> improved at the commit level (as opposed to the reporting), since
>> >> maintainers are often much more knowledgeable and better able to
>> >> understand security impact than the users who are often presenting
>> >> issues.
>> >
>> > I don't think you understand the rate of change in the kernel and how
>> > trying to do this for every commit is unfeasable and unworkable. You do
>> > know how fast it goes, right?
>> >
>>
>> Why is CC'ing a security list any more difficult than CC'ing stable?
>
> It's not, but if all you want to do is make sure the patch is applied to
> the stable trees as you think it's a potential problem, just copy stable
> instead. That's what happens today.
>
It's more about giving distributions the option of prioritizing
security patches, and being more transparent about the potential risk
introduced by certain issues. As you've said, even picking security
fixes out of the stable queue is a substantial amount of work, and
this could be made easier with a bit more openness.
-Dan
>> >> Criteria could be set up for what kinds of issues would be
>> >> candidates for being sent to this list. I don't think this would
>> >> require substantially more work on anyone's part, but by creating a
>> >> culture where potential security issues are treated seriously, it
>> >> would at least stop some of the silent patching that's been going on.
>> >>
>> >> Once potential security issues have been submitted to such a list, I'm
>> >> sure there would be no shortage of people willing and able to analyze
>> >> security impact for each issue, including assigning CVEs. While
>> >> digging through every kernel patch might be too much work, with the
>> >> cooperation of maintainers this can be reduced to a much smaller
>> >> subset that would be easily dealt with.
>> >
>> > I would be happy if someone could just document the patches that _are_
>> > applied to stable kernel releases. I bet you can't keep up with that,
>> > they are moving so fast.
>> >
>> > Sorry, I don't think this is workable as you are proposing, but feel
>> > free to prove me wrong :)
>> >
>>
>> Perhaps you're right, but maybe we can generate some discussion to
>> come up with a solution that improves upstream security communication
>> and IS workable.
>
> Again, just try to start out by watching stable@...nel.org and writing
> up summaries for the patches it applies and releases. I think you
> severly underestimate the work involved. But hey, what do I know, I
> could be totally wrong, it wouldn't be the first time today that
> happened :)
>
> thanks,
>
> greg k-h
>
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