Re: Rough Drafts of CVE Counting Documents

[Pascal Meunier <pmeunier@cerias.purdue.edu>]

The change to #1 and #2, and even more with the other change suggested 
by Kurt ("weakness in the system"), would greatly increase the scope for 
the CVE.  CNAs will issue CVEs for any and all hardware vulnerable to 
the "row hammer effect", for example, and not just for the software that 
is particularly vulnerable (e.g., CVE-2015-0565).  This could create an 
explosion of IDs requests, as some hardware combinations may make things 
worse or better -- will we keep track of all combinations?  Next we'll 
get ID requests for overclocked hardware (if overclocking is allowed), 
or hardware under borderline or unusual temperatures, dirty hardware, 
under brownouts and for every device that hangs, crashes or reboots 
because it could indicate a vulnerability.  Will boards that have common 
chips be grouped under the same CVE ID?  How different is different 
enough so you'll issue 2 or 2000 different IDs?  The counting document 
doesn't address hardware, I think.  It seems we just almost stumbled and 
now we want to tackle a parcours du combattant.

Changing too much too quickly can be a recipe for disaster, or at least 
great confusion and inadequacy.  I suggest pacing ourselves a bit (pun 
intended) and waiting until the recent changes prove themselves viable 
and stable before making such a change of scope.  At least, the change 
in scope for the project should be something planned and directly 
decided upon instead of being incidental to revising a definition.

As a very minor wording comment, of little importance compared to the 
above, I think that the inclusion of "by a threat source," doesn't help 
and could be removed.

Pascal



On 08/29/2016 02:01 PM, Coffin, Chris wrote:
> All,
>
> Harold Booth and I had a couple of private exchanges regarding the vulnerability 
> definition for the CNA Counting document. The following is the current definition as 
> proposed by Pascal, as well as two of the most current iterations from Harold and I. 
> The difference is obviously in the second sentence which covers both Kurt’s 
> and Pascal’s original comments. I think we are leaning more towards the second 
> version since it stays focused on the weakness aspect of the definition. Any thoughts 
> on this would be hugely appreciated.
>
> #0.1 (current definition from Pascal)
> “A vulnerability in the context of the CVE program, is indicated by code that 
> can be exploited, resulting in a negative impact to confidentiality, integrity, OR 
> availability, and that requires a coding change, specification change or 
> specification deprecation to mitigate or address.”
>
> #1
> “A vulnerability in the context of the CVE program, is defined as any weakness 
> in the computational logic (e.g., code) found in software or hardware devices, that 
> could be exploited by a threat source, and result in a negative impact to the 
> security of a system. Mitigation of the vulnerabilities in this context typically 
> involve coding changes, but could also include specification changes or even 
> specification deprecations (e.g., removal of affected protocols or functionality in 
> their entirety).”
>
> #2
> “A vulnerability in the context of the CVE program, is defined as any weakness 
> in the computational logic (e.g., code) found in software or hardware devices, that 
> could be exploited by a threat source, and result in a negative impact to the 
> security of a system. A non-exhaustive list of examples where a weakness in logic 
> could be found is in the specification of a protocol, description of an algorithm, 
> design or architecture of a product, implementation, circuit layout, or fabrication 
> of the product.”
>
> Thanks Harold!
>
> Chris
>
> From: Kurt Seifried [mailto:kseifried@redhat.com]
> Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2016 1:15 PM
> To: Coffin, Chris <ccoffin@mitre.org>
> Cc: cve-editorial-board-list <cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org>
> Subject: Re: Rough Drafts of CVE Counting Documents
>
>
>
> On Thu, Aug 25, 2016 at 10:21 AM, Coffin, Chris 
> <ccoffin@mitre.org<mailto:ccoffin@mitre.org>> wrote:
> Kurt,
>
> Thanks a ton for the feedback... I very much appreciate it.
>
> FYI... I hadn't taken into account Pascal's feedback in the comments 
> below, but I added Pascal's definition of vulnerability as I think it 
> works very well. Thanks Pascal!
>
>
> > Could we add "typically requires" instead?
>
> I added some text to the definition. Take a look and let me know if 
> this works for you.
>
> > Can INC2 (Vendor acknowledgement) be expanded to include actual 
> > verification through a proof of concept/reproducer for example, or via 
> > source code examination?
>
> I would be concerned with putting strict verification requirements at 
> the inclusion stage. For vendor CNAs, I think they will most likely do 
> some or all of this, and maybe we can insert this language here that 
> mentions it. However, there may also be other CNAs reading this 
> decision who are not the vendor or maintainer of the product/code and 
> assembling this data or getting it from the vendor could take time if 
> it happens at all. My feeling is that the inclusion steps should 
> emphasize speed in assigning CVE IDs as opposed to getting things 
> perfect up front. If a mistake is made, it can be cleaned up after the 
> fact. Thoughts?
>
> Sorry I meant that as OR, not AND, e.g. someone publishes a script that 
> crashes a Linux machine and we have no idea why yet, I would say that 
> should get a CVE asap.
>
>
> > INC3.1 "demonstrated" does this mean we need a reproducer?
>
> Similar to the above, for a vendor CNA following this it is probably not much of 
> an issue. For a CNA who is not the vendor or maintainer, such as yourself, this 
> becomes more important obviously. I think you have said yourself that you get 
> lots of garbage already. In my mind, "demonstrated" means can the 
> requester properly describe the vulnerability and explain what it's impact is. I 
> think if we force the requester to provide a PoC we may be asking for too much at 
> this stage. As the bolded text states, this one is about trusting the researcher 
> in their claim to a certain extent.
>
> Ok, just wanted to make asure we were using the same value of 
> "Demonstrated" =)
>
>
> > INC4: can we better define public/private? E.g. what if a medical 
> > device maker plans to use a CVE for an issue that they will then inform 
> > ever user of directly? Ditto for aerospace/SCADA/etc.
>
> Are you saying that we should soften language now to start including 
> room for CVEs issues that will only be released to a limited group of 
> users? I know we have had these discussions in the recent past, but my 
> understanding was that we would wait to make this kind of change until 
> CVE actually brought on some of these domains where this issue will 
> come up.
>
> I think we need to start looking at this and be ready to have in answer 
> probably within the year or early next year, especially if we want to 
> expand CVE to these industry types as I suspect they will have 
> questions at a minimum.
>
>
> > INC5: "CVE IDs are assigned to products that are customer-controlled or 
> > customer-installable." what about on premises solutions that are locked down? I know 
> > many medical devices, high end manufacturing, etc you buy it, but you don't touch it, the 
> > company tech services it. Ditto for other regulated items like elevators (contractually 
> > most elevator maintenance involves a "if anyone but us touches it, your warranty is 
> > totally void").
>
> This is a really great point! This is another area that I haven't really put much 
> thought into and I don't think anyone else on the board has brought up in the 
> recent past. Outside of the "sort of" similar idea of SaaS (and 
> possibly other xaaS), I imagine there could be IT products (e.g., appliances and 
> such) produced now or in the future that could fall into this category. Similar 
> to the above comments though, should we account for this in the current rules, or 
> should we wait until presented with this problem such as when we bring on the 
> medical devices domain?
>
> Again above, I think we should look into this and have an answer sooner 
> rather then later.
>
>
>  > CNT4: I'd like to better define the embedded code situation, e.g. 
> libxml/gzip situations (bits of those are everywhere!).
>
> One thing that I noticed is that the decision language did not direct 
> the CNA to defer the report to the appropriate CNA in the case of a 
> shared codebase that doesn't apply to the receiving CNA (i.e., the CNA 
> following the decisions based on the report). Are you looking for more 
> process explanation in this case or maybe more examples? If you have 
> anything specific please feel free to pass along.
>
> So for example where does code move from "Same codebase" to "different code 
> base", e.g. mysql/various forks, embedded copies of X (gzip for example), I think one good sniff 
> test is "does the patch work with no or minimal changes"?
>
>
>
> Chris
>
>
> From: Kurt Seifried 
> [mailto:kseifried@redhat.com<mailto:kseifried@redhat.com>]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 24, 2016 3:55 PM
> To: Coffin, Chris <ccoffin@mitre.org<mailto:ccoffin@mitre.org>>
> Cc: cve-editorial-board-list 
> <cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org<mailto:cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org>>
> Subject: Re: Rough Drafts of CVE Counting Documents
>
> Some feedback:
> A vulnerability in the context of the CVE program, is code that can be 
> exploited, resulting in a negative impact to confidentiality, 
> integrity, and availability, and that requires a code change to 
> mitigate or address.
> Some vulns are internal to the protocol and the only code change that "fixes" it 
> is to remove the code/functionality altogether. Could we add "typically requires" 
> instead? I'm worried about the intersection of software/API vulns that will become 
> increasingly common (more instances of this, and people will start looking for them).
> Can INC2 (Vendor acknowledgement) be expanded to include actual 
> verification through a proof of concept/reproducer for example, or via 
> source code examination?
> INC3.1 "demonstrated" does this mean we need a reproducer?
> INC4: can we better define public/private? E.g. what if a medical 
> device maker plans to use a CVE for an issue that they will then inform 
> ever user of directly? Ditto for aerospace/SCADA/etc.
> INC5: "CVE IDs are assigned to products that are customer-controlled or 
> customer-installable." what about on premises solutions that are locked down? I know 
> many medical devices, high end manufacturing, etc you buy it, but you don't touch it, the 
> company tech services it. Ditto for other regulated items like elevators (contractually 
> most elevator maintenance involves a "if anyone but us touches it, your warranty is 
> totally void").
> CNT4: I'd like to better define the embedded code situation, e.g. 
> libxml/gzip situations (bits of those are everywhere!).
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 2:19 PM, Coffin, Chris 
> <mailto:ccoffin@mitre.org<mailto:ccoffin@mitre.org>> wrote:
> All,
>
> Attached is a new version of the CVE Counting for CNAs document. I  
> have made some changes to the counting decisions as well as provided 
> some clarifications in certain decisions based on feedback from the CVE 
> Team.
>
> Chris
>
> From: 
> mailto:owner-cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org<mailto:owner-cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org>
>  
> [mailto:mailto<mailto:mailto>:owner-cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org<mailto:owner-cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org>]
>  On Behalf Of Coffin, Chris
> Sent: Monday, July 25, 2016 5:03 PM
> To: cve-editorial-board-list 
> <mailto:cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org<mailto:cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org>>
> Subject: Rough Drafts of CVE Counting Documents
>
> All,
>
> Sorry for the delay, these were supposed to go out last week.
>
> Attached is the latest marked up version of the Simplified Counting 
> Rules, as well as the promised very rough version of a new CVE 
> Vulnerability Counting for CNAs document. There is still plenty of work 
> to be done on this new document, but the main focus so far has been to 
> develop the decision trees. The included decision trees are meant to 
> replace the older decision trees found at 
> https://github.com/CVEProject/docs/blob/gh-pages/cna/application-guidance.md.
>
> Current thinking is that the introduction of the “independently fixable” 
> concept obsoletes many of the older counting decisions, but we’d be interested to 
> hear others opinions on this. Also, the inclusion rules actually grew a bit, but these all 
> seem to be fairly straightforward.
>
> The Report Type decision is something that came up during internal discussions 
> and is probably new to everyone. An earlier version of the doc didn’t 
> have good coverage for how to count when independently fixable resulted in No 
> or Not Sure. The Report Type allows for common reporting cases to be handled 
> in a somewhat uniform way. The idea is to handle the most common reports and 
> the recommended counting action for each. We are definitely interested in 
> hearing others thoughts on this entire counting decision, as well as the 
> common reports and actions that are defined.
>
> Like I said before, this is a very early version so I am open to any 
> and all feedback. Thanks in advance!
>
> Chris Coffin
> The CVE Team
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> --
> Kurt Seifried -- Red Hat -- Product Security -- Cloud
> PGP A90B F995 7350 148F 66BF 7554 160D 4553 5E26 7993
> Red Hat Product Security contact: 
> mailto:secalert@redhat.com<mailto:secalert@redhat.com>
>
>
>
> --
>
> --
> Kurt Seifried -- Red Hat -- Product Security -- Cloud
> PGP A90B F995 7350 148F 66BF 7554 160D 4553 5E26 7993
> Red Hat Product Security contact: 
> secalert@redhat.com<mailto:secalert@redhat.com>