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2018-12-01Documentation/security-bugs: Postpone fix publication in exceptional casesWill Deacon
commit 544b03da39e2d7b4961d3163976ed4bfb1fac509 upstream. At the request of the reporter, the Linux kernel security team offers to postpone the publishing of a fix for up to 5 business days from the date of a report. While it is generally undesirable to keep a fix private after it has been developed, this short window is intended to allow distributions to package the fix into their kernel builds and permits early inclusion of the security team in the case of a co-ordinated disclosure with other parties. Unfortunately, discussions with major Linux distributions and cloud providers has revealed that 5 business days is not sufficient to achieve either of these two goals. As an example, cloud providers need to roll out KVM security fixes to a global fleet of hosts with sufficient early ramp-up and monitoring. An end-to-end timeline of less than two weeks dramatically cuts into the amount of early validation and increases the chance of guest-visible regressions. The consequence of this timeline mismatch is that security issues are commonly fixed without the involvement of the Linux kernel security team and are instead analysed and addressed by an ad-hoc group of developers across companies contributing to Linux. In some cases, mainline (and therefore the official stable kernels) can be left to languish for extended periods of time. This undermines the Linux kernel security process and puts upstream developers in a difficult position should they find themselves involved with an undisclosed security problem that they are unable to report due to restrictions from their employer. To accommodate the needs of these users of the Linux kernel and encourage them to engage with the Linux security team when security issues are first uncovered, extend the maximum period for which fixes may be delayed to 7 calendar days, or 14 calendar days in exceptional cases, where the logistics of QA and large scale rollouts specifically need to be accommodated. This brings parity with the linux-distros@ maximum embargo period of 14 calendar days. Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> Cc: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk> Cc: Amit Shah <aams@amazon.com> Cc: Laura Abbott <labbott@redhat.com> Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Co-developed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Co-developed-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk> Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw@amazon.co.uk> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com> Reviewed-by: Tyler Hicks <tyhicks@canonical.com> Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2018-12-01Documentation/security-bugs: Clarify treatment of embargoed informationWill Deacon
commit 14fdc2c5318ae420e68496975f48dc1dbef52649 upstream. The Linux kernel security team has been accused of rejecting the idea of security embargoes. This is incorrect, and could dissuade people from reporting security issues to us under the false assumption that the issue would leak prematurely. Clarify the handling of embargoed information in our process documentation. Co-developed-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Acked-by: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Acked-by: Laura Abbott <labbott@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com> Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2018-03-09docs: clarify security-bugs disclosure policyDave Hansen
I think we need to soften the language a bit. It might scare folks off, especially the: We prefer to fully disclose the bug as soon as possible. which is not really the case. Linus says: It's not full disclosure, it's not coordinated disclosure, and it's not "no disclosure". It's more like just "timely open fixes". I changed a bit of the wording in here, but mostly to remove the word "disclosure" since it seems to mean very specific things to people that we do not mean here. Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> Reviewed-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Alan Cox <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com> Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org> Cc: Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@linux.intel.com> Cc: Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2017-03-07docs: Clarify details for reporting security bugsKees Cook
The kernel security team is regularly asked to provide CVE identifiers, which we don't normally do. This updates the documentation to mention this and adds some more details about coordination and patch handling that come up regularly. Based on an earlier draft by Willy Tarreau. Signed-off-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> Acked-by: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2016-10-24docs: fix locations of several documents that got movedMauro Carvalho Chehab
The previous patch renamed several files that are cross-referenced along the Kernel documentation. Adjust the links to point to the right places. Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com>
2016-10-24docs-rst: create an user's manual bookMauro Carvalho Chehab
Place README, REPORTING-BUGS, SecurityBugs and kernel-parameters on an user's manual book. As we'll be numbering the user's manual, remove the manual numbering from SecurityBugs. Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@s-opensource.com>