oss-sec mailing list archives
Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security
From: Kurt Seifried <kseifried () redhat com>
Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2017 14:08:51 -0600
On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 1:40 PM, Bob Friesenhahn < bfriesen () simple dallas tx us> wrote:
On Tue, 26 Sep 2017, Kurt Seifried wrote: On Tue, Sep 26, 2017 at 11:31 AM, Bob Friesenhahn <It is incredibly difficult for most non-commercial upstreams to do this since they have limited manpower, they are not informed of all the applicable CVEs, and the CVE information received is essentially hearsay, received from unknown/unverifiable sources. I am thinking that it is best for most non-commercial upstreams to not mention CVEs at all.Uhm. Where to begin. Ok, well for one thing just because we can't have 100% perfect coverage doesn't mean we should simply give up. Also CVE's aren't "hearsay", they are claims based, with evidence being needed (the stronger the claim, the more likely you are to get a CVE), especially in the open source world where I typically require a link to either the vuln code, or the code patch in order to give a CVE to something (if you can't tell me what code is vuln, in open source, then chances are you need to understand the vuln more before we CVE it up, exceptions of course can be made, e.g. when someone has a reproducer that works reliably).I did not mean that the CVE itself is "hearsay". What I meant is the way an upstream maintainer is informed about a CVE is often no better than "hearsay". In some cases the information comes from someone who is already known and trusted while in other cases it is impossible to even tell who is providing the information since the person providing the information has intentionally obfusticated their identity. If an upstream maintainer reports that a release resolves a particular CVE, then he could easily have provided wrong information given that the upstream maintainer does not have access to the technical details of the report and analysis which initiated the CVE and may confuse one issue with another. It may be that the upstream maintainer fixes a problem and some weeks later the CVE is created related to the problem which was fixed.
One aspect of CVE is "did you tell the upstream", we really want people to not just get CVEs, but to also work with upstream (assuming they're reasonable people) and coordinate the fixes/etc (CVEs are nice, CVEs with patches are even nicer). If the researchers are getting CVEs and not telling the upstreams, or worse they are and getting no response, then at least the stuff will show up in the CVE database and non upstream people can deal with it.
You can check the CVE Database? There is the official MITRE one:cve.mitre.org and the DWF for Open Source (and yes, I lag in submissions to MITRE) at https://github.com/distributedweaknessfiling/DWF-CVE-Database/ in both cases the CVEs will have reference link(s) that ideally point to the upstream making it easy to match up.The database entries do not contain enough information for an upstream maintainer to identify one issue from another similar issue. They only contain sanitized information.
That should not be happening, you may want to read https://cve.mitre.org/cve/editorial_policies/counting_rules.html but TL;DR: each CVE should have enough info to be specifically identifiable. If you have example to the contrary please let me know. Some of the initial DWF ones are a bit messy I'll grant (it's an experiment/work in progress), but I've worked on ensuring that new ones are cleaner going forwards.
Bob -- Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen () simple dallas tx us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
-- Kurt Seifried -- Red Hat -- Product Security -- Cloud PGP A90B F995 7350 148F 66BF 7554 160D 4553 5E26 7993 Red Hat Product Security contact: secalert () redhat com
Current thread:
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security, (continued)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Greg KH (Sep 28)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Salvatore Bonaccorso (Sep 28)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Greg KH (Sep 28)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Brad Spengler (Sep 28)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Bob Friesenhahn (Sep 26)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Kurt Seifried (Sep 26)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Agostino Sarubbo (Sep 26)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Kurt Seifried (Sep 26)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Marcus Meissner (Sep 27)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Bob Friesenhahn (Sep 26)
- Re: Linux kernel CVEs not mentioned on oss-security Kurt Seifried (Sep 26)