Re: No GLSA since January?!?

On Friday 26 August 2011 14:08:38 Kevin Bryan wrote:
> Although I like having the summary information about what the
> vulnerability is, if I'm only reading them for packages I have
> installed, then a reference of some kind would suffice.
> 
> I'd be fine even if it was just a new variable in the .ebuild file that
> somehow indicated which versions it was a fix for, reusing the syntax
> for dependency checking.  A reference to the CVE or gentoo bug reference
> would be good, too:
> 
> SECURITY_FIXES="<www-plugins/adobe-flash-10.1.102.64"
> SECURITY_REF="CVE:2010-2169 http://..."
> SECURITY_BUG="343089"
> SECURITY_IMPACT="remote"
> 
> Then would be most of the work the committer needs to do is right there
> in a file they are modifying anyway.
> 
> The portage @security set could also look for and evaluate these tags,
> instead of parsing the GLSA's.

A complete change of the system is very unlikely.
Nevertheless: What is the end-to-end process in your solution? (i.e. 
vulnerability report to 'advisory' release)

A while ago a similar solution was proposed. Basically you want to shift our 
job back to the package maintainers. That might work, but rais a few new 
issues.

We'd automatically lose some consistency, because not everyone would follow 
the needed or wanted data scheme. Such a thing is much better to control in a 
smaller and better connected group of people.

Also, cleanup and large amounts of issues in packages are issues. Browsers 
usually get hundreds of CVEs assigned in a year, that would be all in the 
Ebuild, and for how long?

Personally, I'm not convinced this is a model that would be an improvement 
over the current situation.

Alex

-- 
Alex Legler <[email protected]>
Gentoo Security / Ruby

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