Security response team guidelines

These are the guidelines for the security response team members including OpenBMC community members who are responding to problems reported by the security vulnerability reporting process.

The security response team coordinates activity to address privately disclosed security vulnerabilities, engages resources to address them, and creates security advisories.

Here are the primary expectations:

• Keep problems private until announce
• Work with diligence
• Keep stakeholders informed

Workflow highlights:

1. Handle new problem reports

   • Within a day, acknowledge you received the report. Note that reports are archived in the mailing list.
   • Communicate within the security response team, typically be cc'ing the openbmc-security email list.

2. Analyze the problem

   • Determine if the problem is new or known.
   • Determine if the problem is in OpenBMC.
     • If the problem is in a project that OpenBMC uses, re-route the problem to that upstream project.
     • Note that the problem may be in a customized version of OpenBMC but not in OpenBMC itself.
   • Determine which OpenBMC areas should address the problem.
   • Draft a CVE-like report which includes only:
     • the vulnerability description: omit OpenBMC specifics
     • CVSS metrics
     • CVE identifiers, if known
   • Gather data for the security advisory (see template below).

3. Bring in contributors as needed (upstream, downstream, and OpenBMC)

   • Use private channels, e.g., email.
   • Inform contacts this is private work as part of the OpenBMC security response team. For example, link these guidelines.
   • Coordinate with all stakeholders and keep them informed.

4. For OpenBMC problems:

   1. Determine if this is a high severity problem. Example using CVSS metrics: a remotely exploitable or low complexity attack that has high impact to the BMC's confidentiality, integrity, or availability.
   2. Avoid pre-announcing problems. Be especially careful with high severity problems. When fixing the problem, use the contribution process but limit the details in the issue or use a private channel to discuss.
   3. Negotiate how the code review will proceed.
      • Consider contributing using a Gerrit private change if everyone has access to Gerrit.
      • Consider using Patch set emails to make reviews accessible to all stakeholders.
   4. When agreed, publish a security advisory to https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/issues and email list openbmc@lists.ozlabs.org. Make the Gerrit review publicly viewable.
   5. Improve OpenBMC processes to avoid future problems.

DRAFT Template: Initial response to the problem submitter

The OpenBMC security response team has received the problem.

• Thank you for reporting this.
• Share preliminary results of the analysis.
• Share preliminary OpenBMC plans or that we are analyzing the problem.
• Set expectations for follow-up communications.

DRAFT Template: OpenBMC Security Advisory

OpenBMC Security Advisory
Title: ...

...summary: include CVEs, releases affected, etc....

The CVSS score for these vulnerabilities is "...", with temporal score
"...", with the following notes:
https://www.first.org/cvss/calculator/3.0
- AV:
- AC:
- PR:
- UI:
- S:
- C/I/A:
- E:
- RC:

The fix is in the https://github.com/openbmc/... repository as git
commit ID ....

For more information, see OpenBMC contact information at
https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc file README.md.

Credit for finding these problems: ...

Reference

Some of these guidelines were collected from:

• https://bestpractices.coreinfrastructure.org/en/projects/34
• https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/v4.16/admin-guide/security-bugs.html
• https://oss-security.openwall.org/wiki/mailing-lists/distros

Team composition and email maintenance

The security response team is controlled by the OpenBMC Technical Steering Committee. Membership is restricted to a core group, with selection based upon their community role(s), experience, and expertise responding to security incidents.

The security response team uses the openbmc-security at lists.ozlabs.org private email list as a channel for confidential communication, so its membership reflects the composition of the security response team. The list membership should be reviewed periodically and can be managed from https://lists.ozlabs.org/listinfo/openbmc-security.

The email list subscribers should be reminded periodically to protect access to the emails from the list because of the sensitive information they contain.

The email list membership is not intended to be secret. For example, we can discuss it a public forum. However, no effort is made to make the list public.

The email list identification could be for privately reporting OpenBMC security vulnerabilities and its description could be: This email list is for privately reporting OpenBMC security vulnerabilities. List membership is limited to the OpenBMC security response team. For more information, see https://github.com/openbmc/docs/blob/master/security/how-to-report-a-security-vulnerability.md

Sample response for denying list membership:

Thanks for your interest in OpenBMC security.  Subscriptions to the
openbmc-security@lists.ozlabs.org email list are by invitation only
and are typically extended only to security response team members.
For more information, see https://github.com/openbmc/docs/security or
attend a security working group meeting:
https://github.com/openbmc/openbmc/wiki/Security-working-group.

Yours truly,
OpenBMC security response team