RE: Rough Drafts of CVE Counting Documents

["Coffin, Chris" <ccoffin@mitre.org>]

Pascal,

These are great observations and I do agree with your point of view. I 
have spent a good part of yesterday and today thinking about the best 
way to address this. One way to handle it might be to leave the door 
open in regards to hardware, in other words, just state that "some" 
hardware is included. This allows us to reserve the right to refuse 
assignments for hardware specific issues like the ones you mentioned. I 
have crafted a new version of the description below that may or may not 
satisfy your current concerns in this regard.

Like Kurt had added, requesters will still have to ask CNAs for CVEs 
and the CNAs don't have to provide them in cases where it isn't 
applicable or doesn't make sense. Additionally, we could add an 
inclusion decision that could specifically exclude certain situations 
(e.g., environmental impacts to hardware, etc.).

#3
"A vulnerability in the context of the CVE program, is defined as a 
weakness in the computational logic (e.g., code) found in software and 
some hardware components (e.g., firmware),  and when exploited results 
in a negative impact to confidentiality, integrity, OR availability. 
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).

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Pascal Meunier [mailto:pmeunier@cerias.purdue.edu] 
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 2:10 PM
To: Coffin, Chris <ccoffin@mitre.org>; Kurt Seifried 
<kseifried@redhat.com>; Booth, Harold (Fed) <harold.booth@nist.gov>
Cc: cve-editorial-board-list <cve-editorial-board-list@lists.mitre.org>
Subject: Re: Rough Drafts of CVE Counting Documents


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-l
> ist@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.mit
> re.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>
>