• Thomas Gleixner's avatar
    Documentation/process: Embargoed hardware security issues · ddaedbbe
    Thomas Gleixner authored
    To address the requirements of embargoed hardware issues, like Meltdown,
    Spectre, L1TF etc. it is necessary to define and document a process for
    handling embargoed hardware security issues.
    
    Following the discussion at the maintainer summit 2018 in Edinburgh
    (https://lwn.net/Articles/769417/) the volunteered people have worked
    out a process and a Memorandum of Understanding.  The latter addresses
    the fact that the Linux kernel community cannot sign NDAs for various
    reasons.
    
    The initial contact point for hardware security issues is different from
    the regular kernel security contact to provide a known and neutral
    interface for hardware vendors and researchers. The initial primary
    contact team is proposed to be staffed by Linux Foundation Fellows, who
    are not associated to a vendor or a distribution and are well connected
    in the industry as a whole.
    
    The process is designed with the experience of the past incidents in
    mind and tries to address the remaining gaps, so future (hopefully rare)
    incidents can be handled more efficiently.  It won't remove the fact,
    that most of this has to be done behind closed doors, but it is set up
    to avoid big bureaucratic hurdles for individual developers.
    
    The process is solely for handling hardware security issues and cannot
    be used for regular kernel (software only) security bugs.
    
    This memo can help with hardware companies who, and I quote, "[my
    manager] doesn't want to bet his job on the list keeping things secret."
    This despite numerous leaks directly from that company over the years,
    and none ever so far from the kernel security team.  Cognitive
    dissidence seems to be a requirement to be a good manager.
    
    To accelerate the adoption of this  process, we introduce the concept of
    ambassadors in participating companies. The ambassadors are there to
    guide people to comply with the process, but are not automatically
    involved in the disclosure of a particular incident.
    Signed-off-by: default avatarThomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarJosh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarLaura Abbott <labbott@redhat.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarBen Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarTyler Hicks <tyhicks@canonical.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarKonrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarJiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
    Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20190815212505.GC12041@kroah.comSigned-off-by: default avatarGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
    ddaedbbe
index.rst 1.41 KB