Follow @Openwall on Twitter for new release announcements and other news
[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]
Message-ID: <50903952.3020704@redhat.com>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 14:32:18 -0600
From: Kurt Seifried <kseifried@...hat.com>
To: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com
CC: "Steven M. Christey" <coley@...us.mitre.org>,
        Josh Bressers <bressers@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: Strange CVE situation (at least one ID should
 come of this)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 10/30/2012 11:34 AM, Steven M. Christey wrote:>
>> On 10/26/2012 01:54 PM, Josh Bressers wrote:
>>> 
>>> If I was to list the security problems I found after a few
>>> minutes of looking, they are:
>>> 
>>> * It uses MD5 passwords * The shadow file is directly modified 
>>> without locking (which could lead to a race condition) * If you
>>> get the password wrong, it doesn't unlink the empty temporary
>>> file.
>>> 
>>> None are really a big deal, you *could* run this and probably
>>> never notice these problems.
>>> 
>>> Fundamentally though, this thing should get one CVE ID that 
>>> basically say "don't use this". How have situations like this
>>> been handled in the past?
> 
> To have a CVE for "don't use this" is not consistent with
> long-existing practice.  I don't recall ever intentionally
> assigning a CVE for such a thing - after all, CVE is about
> vulnerabilities, and "don't use this" is awfully vague.

True, but we've already gone down that road, e.g.:

CVE-2012-2400 	Unspecified vulnerability in
wp-includes/js/swfobject.js in WordPress before 3.3.2 has unknown
impact and attack vectors.

> Deployment of risky software is effectively a configuration or
> asset management issue, which is well outside the scope of CVE.
> (Maybe it's more like a Common Configuration Enumeration (CCE)
> issue.)

If anything I think it would fit into CPE

> In other words - we really shouldn't use CVE to handle this
> problem.  It is feature creep, and I believe that it WOULD become a
> huge mess.  Maybe this would work for some, but not for all of
> CVE's consumers, which is a wide variety of people and use cases.
> I understand that there is a problem here, though.

True about the mess and not all customers being happy with it.

> It looks like Josh laid out at least 3 different security issues in
> your initial request.  Those can/should get CVEs assigned, even if
> there aren't full details.  The lack of a vendor CONFIRM reference
> or advisory, tells the consumer that the vendor hasn't addressed
> it.
> 
> Perhaps the OSS community could borrow an idea from one of the
> framework vendors with lots of third-party modules - I forget if it
> was Joomla or Drupal - who actively maintained a list of poorly
> maintained or obsolete software.
> 
> In the broadest sense, however, such old software is still useful
> for people who are starting in vulnerability research, or just
> doing it for fun; many people who audit what MITRE calls "phpGolf"
> applications, go on to do more substantive research.

The old software would still be available (unless someone goes through
sourceforge for example and does some serious spring cleaning).

> Perhaps it is time to re-examine Crispin Cowan's Sardonix project,
> which tried to match vulnerability researchers with open source
> projects, in order to build reputations for both.
> 
> - Steve


- -- 
Kurt Seifried Red Hat Security Response Team (SRT)
PGP: 0x5E267993 A90B F995 7350 148F 66BF 7554 160D 4553 5E26 7993

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.12 (GNU/Linux)
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=eNjw
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Powered by blists - more mailing lists

Please check out the Open Source Software Security Wiki, which is counterpart to this mailing list.

Confused about mailing lists and their use? Read about mailing lists on Wikipedia and check out these guidelines on proper formatting of your messages.