The branch master has been updated
via ac747af201144b372b8b6145d2219fae6bccd958 (commit)
from 11d98938cac1a3db7c001e497e44fcc07beb3503 (commit)
- Log -----------------------------------------------------------------
commit ac747af201144b372b8b6145d2219fae6bccd958
Author: Mark J. Cox <m...@awe.com>
Date: Tue Jan 23 13:28:02 2018 +0000
Simplify security policy, as per f2f discussion and subsequent OMC vote
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary of changes:
policies/secpolicy.html | 177 +++++++++++++++++-------------------------------
1 file changed, 61 insertions(+), 116 deletions(-)
diff --git a/policies/secpolicy.html b/policies/secpolicy.html
index 26e34c3..c143a80 100644
--- a/policies/secpolicy.html
+++ b/policies/secpolicy.html
@@ -12,99 +12,38 @@
<header>
<h2>Security Policy</h2>
<h5>
- Last modified 28th September 2015
+ Last modified 23rd January 2018
</h5>
</header>
<div class="entry-content">
- <h2>Introduction</h2>
-
- <p>Our policy on how we internally handle security issues
- is based on experience and has evolved over the years.</p>
-
<h2>Reporting security issues</h2>
<p>
- We have an email address which can be used to notify
- us of possible security vulnerabilities. A subset of
- OpenSSL team members receive this mail, and messages
- can be sent using PGP encryption. Full details are at <a
-
href="/news/vulnerabilities.html">https://www.openssl.org/news/vulnerabilities.html</a>
+ If you wish to report a possible security issue in OpenSSL
+ please <a href="/news/vulnerabilities.html">notify us</a>.
</p>
+ <h2>Issue triage</h2>
+
<p>
- When we are notified about an issue we engage resources
- within the OpenSSL team to investigate and prioritise it.
- We may also utilise resources from the <a
href="/community/thanks.html">employers</a> of our team
- members or committers, as well as others we have worked with before.
- </p>
+ Notifications are received by a group of OpenSSL Management
Committee
+ members. We engage resources within
+ OpenSSL to start the investigation and prioritisation. We may work
in private
+ with individuals who are not on the OpenSSL Management Committee as
+ well as other organisations and
+ our <a href="/community/thanks.html">employers</a> where we believe
+ this can help with the issue investigation, resolution, or
+ testing.</p>
- <h2>Background</h2>
-
- <p>
- Everyone would like to get advance notice of security issues
- in OpenSSL. This is a complex topic and we need to set out
- some background with our findings:
</p>
- <ul>
- <li>The more people you tell in advance the higher the
- likelihood that a leak will occur. We have seen this
- happen before, both with OpenSSL and other projects.</li>
-
- <li>A huge number of products from an equally large number of
- organisations use OpenSSL. It's not just secure websites, you're
- just as likely to find OpenSSL inside your smart TV, car, or
- fridge.</li>
-
- <li>We strongly believe that the right to advance patches/info
- should not be based in any way on paid membership to some forum.
- You can not pay us to get security patches in advance.</li>
-
- <li>We can benefit from peer review of the patches and advisory.
- Keeping security issues private means they can't get the level
- of testing or scrutiny that they otherwise would.</li>
- <li>It is not acceptable for organisations to use advance notice
- in marketing as a competitive advantage. For example "if you
- had bought our product/used our service you would have been
- protected a week ago".</li>
-
- <li>There are actually not a large number of serious
- vulnerabilities in OpenSSL which make it worth spending
- significant time keeping our own list of vendors we trust, or
- signing framework agreements, or dealing with changes, and
- policing the policy. This is a significant amount of effort per
- issue that is better spent on other things.</li>
-
- <li>We have previously used third parties to handle notification
- for us including CPNI, oCERT, or CERT/CC, but none were
- suitable.</li>
-
- <li>It's in the best interests of the Internet as a whole to get
- fixes for OpenSSL security issues out quickly. OpenSSL embargoes
- should be measured in days and weeks, not months or years.</li>
-
- <li>Many sites affected by OpenSSL issues will be running a
- version of OpenSSL they got from some vendor (and likely bundled
- with an operating system). The most effective way for these
- sites to get protected is to get an updated version from that
- vendor. Sites who use their own OpenSSL compilations should be
- able to handle a quick patch and recompile once the issue is
- public.</li>
- </ul>
+ <h2>Issue severity</h2>
- <h2>Internal handling of security issues</h2>
-
- <p>This leads us to our policy for security issues notified
- to us or found by our team which are not yet public.</p>
-
- <p>"private" means kept within the OpenSSL management
- team.</p>
-
- <p>We will determine the risk of each issue being addressed.
- We will take into account our experience dealing with past
+ <p>We will determine the risk of each issue,
+ taking into account our experience dealing with past
issues, versions affected, common defaults, and use cases.
- We divide the issues into the following categories:</p>
+ We use the following severity categories:</p>
<ul>
<li><em>CRITICAL Severity.</em>
@@ -149,49 +88,55 @@
releases.</li>
</ul>
- <p>During the investigation of issues we may work with individuals
- and organisations who are not on the OpenSSL Management Committee.
- We do this because past experience has shown that they can add
value to our
- understanding of the issue and the ability to test patches. In
- cases where protocols are affected this is the best way to
- mitigate the risk that a poorly reviewed update causes significant
- breakage, or to detect if issues are being exploited in the wild.
- We have a strict policy on what these organisations and
- individuals can do with the information and will review the need
- on a case by case basis.</p>
-
<h2>Prenotification policy</h2>
- <p>Where we are planning an update that fixes security issues
- we will notify the openssl-announce list and update the openssl
+ <ul><li>Where we are planning an update that fixes security issues
+ we will notify the <a
href="https://mta.openssl.org/mailman/listinfo/openssl-announce";>openssl-announce
list</a> and update the OpenSSL
website to give our scheduled update release date and time and
the severity of issues being fixed by the update. No further
- information about the issues will be given. This is to aid
- organisations that need to ensure they have staff available
- to handle triaging our announcement and what it means to
- their organisation.</p>
-
- <p>For updates that include critical or high severity issues we will
- also prenotify with more details and patches. Our policy
- is to let the organisations that have a general purpose OS
- that uses OpenSSL have a few days notice in order to prepare
- packages for their users and feedback test results.</p>
-
- <p>We use the mailing list described at <a
-
href="http://oss-security.openwall.org/wiki/mailing-lists/distros";>http://oss-security.openwall.org/wiki/mailing-lists/distros</a>
- for this. We may also include other organisations that
- would otherwise qualify for list membership. We may
- withdraw notifying individual organisations from future
+ information about the issues will be given.</li>
+
+ <li>Where we are planning an update that include CRITICAL or HIGH
severity issues we will
+ also prenotify certain organisations with more details and
+ patches. <ul>
+ <li>The organisations we prenotify include those that produce a
+ general purpose OS
+ that uses OpenSSL as included on
+ <a
+
href="http://oss-security.openwall.org/wiki/mailing-lists/distros";>this
+ list of Operating System distribution security contacts</a>.</li>
+ <li>We may also include other organisations that are not listed but
+ would otherwise qualify for list membership. </li>
+ <li>We may
+ withdraw notifying certain organisations from future
prenotifications if they leak issues before they are public
- or over time do not add value (value can be added by providing
- feedback, corrections, test results, etc.)</p>
-
- <p>Finally, note that not all security issues are notified to
- us directly; some come from third parties such as companies
- that pay for vulnerabilities, some come from country CERTs.
- These intermediaries, or the researchers themselves, may
- follow a different style of notification. This is within their
- rights and outside of the control of the OpenSSL team.</p>
+ or over time do not add value. </li></ul></li></ul>
+
+ <p>Note: researchers or intermediaries who
+ notify us of issues may have their own prenotification policy in
addition
+ to ours.</p>
+
+ <h2>Principles</h2>
+
+ <p>The policy above is guided by our security principles:</p>
+
+ <ul>
+ <li>We strongly believe that the right to advance patches/info
+ should not be based in any way on paid membership to some forum.
+ You can not pay us to get security patches in advance.</li>
+
+ <li>It's in the best interests of the Internet as a whole to get
+ fixes for OpenSSL security issues out quickly. OpenSSL embargoes
+ should be measured in days and weeks, not months or years.</li>
+
+ <li>Many sites affected by OpenSSL issues will be running a
+ version of OpenSSL they got from some vendor (and likely bundled
+ with an operating system). The most effective way for these
+ sites to get protected is to get an updated version from that
+ vendor.</li>
+
+ </ul>
+
</div>
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