Look at Malhar 3.8.0 thread. There are libraries from Category X introduced as a dependency, so now instead of dealing with the issue when such dependencies were introduced, somebody else needs to deal with removing/fixing those dependencies.
Thank you, Vlad On 11/1/17 11:21, Pramod Immaneni wrote:
My original concern still remains. I think what you have is valuable but would prefer that it be activated in an independent build that notifies the interested parties. On Wed, Nov 1, 2017 at 11:13 AM, Vlad Rozov <vro...@apache.org> wrote:Any other concerns regarding merging the PR? By looking at the active PRs on the apex core the entire conversation looks to be at the moot point. Thank you, Vlad On 10/30/17 18:50, Vlad Rozov wrote:On 10/30/17 17:30, Pramod Immaneni wrote:On Sat, Oct 28, 2017 at 7:47 AM, Vlad Rozov <vro...@apache.org> wrote: Don't we use unit test to make sure that PR does not break an existingfunctionality? For that we use CI environment that we do not control and do not introduce any changes to, but for example Apache infrastructure team may decide to upgrade Jenkins and that may impact Apex builds. The same applies to CVE. It is there to prevent dependencies with severe vulnerabilities. Infrastructure changes are quite different, IMO, from this proposal.While they are not in our control, in majority of the cases, the changes maintain compatibility so everything on top will continue to run the same. In this case a CVE will always fail all PRs, the code changes have nothing to do with introducing the CVE. I did make the exception that if a PR is bringing in the CVE yes do fail it.There were just two recent changes, one on Travis CI side and another on Jenkins side that caused builds for all PRs to fail and none of them was caused by code changes in any of open PRs, so I don't see how it is different. A code change may or may not have relation to CVE introduced. For newly introduced dependencies, there may be known CVEs. In any case I don't think it is important to differentiate how CVE is introduced, it is important to eliminate dependencies with known CVEs.There is no "stick" in a failed build or keeping PR open until dependencyissue is resolved or unit test failure is fixed. Unless an employer punishes its employee for not delivering PR based on that vendor priority, there is no "stick". As we already discussed, the community does not have a deadline for a PR merge or for a release to go out. In a case there is a problematic dependency (with CVE or category X license) you as a PMC suppose to -1 a release (at least I will). Will you consider -1 as a "stick"? For me, it is not about punishing an individual contributor, it is a priority and focus shift for the entire community, not a "stick" for an individual contributor. The stick I am referring to is failing all PRs hoping that will makepeople address CVEs. It's got nothing to do with an employer, people contributing to open source can't expect they can control what the outcome will be or what form it will take. You may be confusing this with some other issue. In some of the arguments, you are assuming this scenario is similar to build failures from failing unit tests and I am arguing that premise. I don't think we should bring regular development to a halt whenever a matching CVE is discovered, unless there is some other secondary reason like merging a PR will make it difficult for a CVE fix to be made. Have you given a thought to what I said about having a separate build that will notify about CVEs.As I mentioned, there is no stick, no deadlines and no issues keeping PRs open until builds can be verified on CI environment. Fixing a failed build is a priority for the *community* not a stick for an individual contributor. I don't see why keeping PRs open (for whatever reason) brings regular development to a halt. Nobody is going to put github repo offline. Contributors may continue to open new PR, collaborate on existing PRs and add more changes (and need to be patient for those changes to be reviewed and accepted). The regular development will continue with the only exception that the next commit to be merged must address the build issue (whether it is a failed unit test or newly found CVE). I don't see much value in a separate build and do not plan to put effort in that direction. Additionally, will not a separate build that only checks for CVE will trigger your initial concern of disclosing CVE in public?Thank you,Vlad On 10/27/17 14:28, Pramod Immaneni wrote: On Fri, Oct 27, 2017 at 11:51 AM, Vlad Rozov <vro...@apache.org> wrote:On 10/26/17 11:46, Pramod Immaneni wrote:On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 10:39 AM, Vlad Rozov <vro...@apache.org> wrote:I guess you are mostly concerned regarding new CVE in an existing dependency. Once such CVE is added to a database, will it be betterto know about it or postpone discovery till we cut release candidate? In case it is reported only during release cycle, there is much less time for the community to take an action and it still needs to be taken (as a PMC member you are responsible for preventing release with severe security issue going out). If it is reported once the information becomes available, there is more time to research and either upgrade the dependency with newly found CVE, agree that it does not impact the project. This would be the more commonly occurring scenario. We can always know about the CVEs because of your changes. We don't need to failbuilds to do that. I am not asking you to remove the reporting. There is no set time for a release so having less time during release for addressing relevant CVEs does not come up. There is also nothing preventing anyone from looking at these reports and taking action earlier. I don't see why it will be more commonly occurring scenario, but I thinkit is equally important to prevent new dependency with severe vulnerabilities being introduced into the project and check existing dependencies for newly discovered severe vulnerabilities. How will we know about CVE if it is removed from CI build? Why require manual verification when it can be done during CI build and does not affect builds done by individual contributors? While there is no set time for a release, there is no set time for a PR merge as well. Yes, nothing prevents anyone from looking at the dependency vulnerabilities, but there is a better chance that "anyone" does not mean nobody if CI build fails. I still do not understand why you value an individual contributor andPR over the community and the project itself. Once there is a severesecurity vulnerability, it affects everyone who cares about the project, including all contributors. I don't see a problem with a PR being in a pending (not merged) open state till a build issue is resolved. That is a mischaracterization that you have stated before as well. A project cannot grow without contributions and without policies thatcreate a supportive enviroment where that can happen, I don't see the need to put unnecessary obstacles for legitimate contributions that are not the cause of a problem. Everytime there is a matching CVE the PRs are going to get blocked till that CVE is addressed and I am not confident we have the bandwidth in the community to address this expediently. It is also inaccurate to equate this to PR not being merged till build issues are resolved as it derives from an assumption that CVE is same as a build failure. While project can't grow without individual contributions, project is aresult of a large number of contributions from a number of contributors. Some of those contributors are not active anymore and will not provide any fixes should a vulnerability be found in their contribution. It becomes a shared responsibility of all currently active community members and those who submit PR are part of the community and share that responsibility, are not they? If a contributor considers him/herself as part of a community, why he or she can't wait for the build issue to be resolved or better take an action on resolving the issue? The only possible explanation that I see is the one that I already mentioned on this thread. If you see this as unnecessary obstacles for legitimate contributions, why to enforce code style, it is also unnecessary obstacle. Unit test? Should it be considered to be optional for a PR to pass unit tests as well? What if an environment change on CI side causes build to fail similar to what happened recently? Should we disable CI builds too and rely on a committer or a release manager to run unit tests? If CI build fails for whatever reason, how can you be sure that if it fails for another PR as well, that they both fail for the same reason and there is no any other reasons that will cause a problem with a PR? I don't know how failing PRs because of CVE, which we don't introduce,don't control, no idea of and possibly unrelated would fall in the same bucket as unit tests. I am at a loss of words for that. There is no reason to block legitimate development for this. This can be handled separtely and in parallel. Maybe there is a way we can setup an independent job on a build server that runs nightly, fails if there are new CVEs discovered and sends an email out to the security or dev group. You could even reduce the CVE threshold for this. I don't believe in a stick approach (carrot and stick metaphor) and believe in proportional measures. Thank you,VladOn 10/26/17 09:42, Pramod Immaneni wrote: On Thu, Oct 26, 2017 at 12:08 AM, Vlad Rozov <vro...@apache.org> wrote: There is a way to add an exception, but it needs to be discussed ona case by case basis. Note that CVEs are not published until a fix isavailable. For severity 8 CVEs I expect patches to become available for the reported version unless it is an obsolete version in which case, the upgrade to a supported version is already overdue. I think we should retain the ability to make that choice of what and when to upgrade rather than hard enforce it. Like I mentioned the CVE maynot apply to us (it has happened before), even though it may be beneficial upgrade generally when its not applicable, there may not be the bandwidth in community to do the necessary changes to upgrade to a newer version especially if those dependencies don't follow semver (has happened before as well, remember effort with ning). My caution comes from experiencing this situation before. I don't see how reporting helps. If a build succeeds, I don't expect anyone to look into the report, it is only when CI build fails,committers and reviewers look into the details. We can add a mandatory step during release that we need to assess CVEs matching this criteria before proceeding with the release. This couldend up requiring upgrade of some dependencies and in other cases it may not be needed. This assessment can also happen more often in adhoc fashion offline before release based upon interest from community. I am also open to making it mandatory with every PR, in future, like you are suggesting, if we see sufficient uptake in community on these issues. From experience this is not there currently and hence I don't want to do this now. IMO, it does not matter how CVE is introduced. It may be a new dependency with an existing CVE or it can be a new CVE for an existingdependency. In both cases, dependency with the CVE needs to be fixed. In one case the PR is not directly responsible for the issue and hence weshould avoid penalizing them or block them. Thank you, VladOn 10/25/17 11:58, Pramod Immaneni wrote: Thanks that sounds mostly fine except what happens if there is a cve matching that severity in a dependency but it doesnt affect usbecause let's say we don't exercise that part of functionality *and* there isn't a fix available or there is a fix but the upgrade requires significant effort (for example if we need to move to a new major version of the dependency or something like that). Is there a way to add an exception like we did for checkstyle in the interim. How about reporting instead of failing the builds. One of the steps in release process could be to investigate these reports before proceeding with the release. If a PR introduces new cves by virtue of adding a new dependency or changing an existing version, that would be of interest and can be subject to failure. Is there a way to distinguish that? On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 8:52 AM Vlad Rozov <vro...@apache.org> wrote: A CVE (should there be a vulnerability in existing or a newly introduced dependency) will not be exposed during the CI build, but the build willfail if the CVE has severity 8 or above. To get the details, it will be necessary to run dependency check manually. Thank you, Vlad On 10/24/17 16:27, Pramod Immaneni wrote: There was a lot of discussion on this but looks like there was no final agreement. Can you summarize what your PR does? Are we disclosingthe actual vulnerabilities as part of the automated build for every PR? That would be a no-no for me. If it is something that requires manual steps, for example as part of a release build, that would be fine.On Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 1:16 PM, Vlad Rozov <vro...@apache.org>wrote: Please see https://github.com/apache/apex-core/pull/585 and APEXCORE-790. Thank you, Vlad On 9/14/17 09:35, Vlad Rozov wrote:Do you expect anything else from the community to recognize a contribution other than committing it to the code line? Once there isa steady flow of quality contributions, the community/PMC will recognize a contributor by making that contributor a committer.Thank you,VladOn 9/12/17 13:05, Sanjay Pujare wrote: For a vendor too, quality ought to be as important as security so I don't think we disagree on the cost benefit analysis. But I get your drift.By "creative incentive" I didn't imply any material incentive (although agift card would be nice :-)) but more along the lines of what a communitycan do to recognize such contribution. Sanjay On Tue, Sep 12, 2017 at 8:10 AM, Vlad Rozov < vro...@apache.org>wrote:I guess we have a different view on the benefit and costdefinition.For me the benefit of fixing CI build, flaky unit test, severe security issue is huge for the community and is possibly small (except for asecurityissues) for a vendor.By "creative" I hope you don't mean that other communitymembers, usersand customers send a contributor a gift cards to compensatefor thecost:). For me PR that is blocked on a failed CI build issufficiently incentive for a contributor to look into why it fails and fixingit. Thank you,VladOn 9/11/17 23:58, Sanjay Pujare wrote: I don't want to speak for others and I don't want to generalize. But an obvious answer could be "cost-benefit analysis".In any case we should come up with a creative way to"incentivize" membersto do these tasks.
