[tptacek]

There is no such thing as "the responsible disclosure protocol". There's really no such thing as "responsible disclosure" at all, but "the responsible disclosure protocol" is a term I have literally never heard before. (I've been a vulnerability researcher since the mid-1990s, for what it's worth.)

[zamalek]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_vulnerability_disc...

> In computer security, coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD, sometimes known as responsible disclosure)

I guess you can learn something new after 36 years.

If you are referring to what you quoted, your pedantry and sharpshooting would result in an incomplete English sentence: "that's why we have the responsible disclosure" is missing a noun. Now that we are firmly in worthless pedantry:

Protocol (n):

1.a. a system of rules that explain the correct conduct and procedures to be followed in formal situations

1.b. a set of conventions governing the treatment and especially the formatting of data in an electronic communications system

If you don't like what I said or disagree, poke holes in factual inaccuracies. However, in the reality that I am pretty sure we all share, responsible disclosure is a well established protocol that is followed by many security researchers, and was imperfectly followed here.

[tptacek]

I don't think you're going to bluff your way through this.

[zamalek]

From elsewhere.[1]

> You: No, I wouldn't, because my own preferences are towards immediate disclosure.

And there it is. You could have said "I don't think responsible disclosure is a good idea" and moved on, but now we have whatever the fuck this is.

Bluffing sure as hell beats incapable of being wrong. I'll take it.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47969417

[voxic11]

What rules were not followed here?

[zamalek]

Tons of distros were not informed.

[marshray]

If you discover a vulnerability in OpenSSL, are you required to track down and separately notify every downstream packager of OpenSSL?

Or do you rely on the OpenSSL project to work their established process?

[akerl_]

Is that a rule? Are there rules?

These researchers found a vulnerability in the Linux kernel. They could have just written a blog post and put it online, or not told anybody, or sold it. But instead they decided to tell the Linux kernel devs, and give them time to act before publishing.

And your beef is that you’ve decided they needed to also inform individual downstream projects that use the Linux kernel? Why? Which ones?

[zamalek]

> Is that a rule?

No, it's commonly followed practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_vulnerability_disc...

I'm all for lighting a fire under the developer's ass, but we live in an imperfect world and the biggest problem that we have is end-users. We may have applied the mitigation on day 0, and updated as soon as the kernel landed in our distro - and if some of us didn't then we've even got savvy users in that "don't update fast enough group" (which is fine, which is human, but is said imperfection).

Major distros should at least have gotten a few days of notice for something this catastrophic. It doesn't help that the kernel is fixed if "normies" aren't able to access it on day 0. For reference, the standard is 30 for the developer to fix and 90 for it to land on machines. Even 30+7 would have been a substantial improvement.

Ethical security research involves ethics, and maybe they aren't referenced in university/college any more - but here's what I was taught: https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics .

> 1.1 Contribute to society and to human well-being, acknowledging that all people are stakeholders in computing.

> [...] Computing professionals should consider whether the results of their efforts will [...] and will be broadly accessible.

> 1.2 Avoid harm.

> (Honestly, all of it)

> 2.3 Know and respect existing rules pertaining to professional work.

> 3.1 Ensure that the public good is the central concern during all professional computing work.

> People—including users, customers, colleagues, and others affected directly or indirectly—should always be the central concern in computing.

Maybe other code of ethics for CS exist; I'd like to know which ethics these ethical researchers were following.

[akerl_]

It’s a commonly followed practice for some people. Notably it’s what was done here: they coordinated disclosure with the Linux kernel devs. And now folks are angry that they didn’t also coordinate with yet more downstream projects.

> For reference, the standard is 30 for the developer to fix and 90 for it to land on machines.

I’ve never seen that as a standard anywhere.

Are you thinking of this? https://projectzero.google/vulnerability-disclosure-policy.h...

[john_strinlai]

>For reference, the standard is 30 for the developer to fix and 90 for it to land on machines

no, the standard is 90 days from notification or 30 days from the patch date, typically whichever is sooner.

e.g.

    > If a vendor patches a security issue 47 days after Project Zero notified 
    > the vendor about the vulnerability, details would be made public on day 77.

    > If a vendor patches a security issue 83 days after Project Zero notified 
    > the vendor about the vulnerability, details would be made public on day 113.

please also note that you are blindly quoting wikipedia articles at people who either currently work in security research, or used to work in security research. while we are not infallible, you should perhaps consider that we at least have real life experience dealing with vulnerability disclosure processes, and arent just learning about them today from wikipedia. when a room full of experienced professionals are telling you that you are misunderstanding something, that is a sign to step back for a second and maybe reconsider your position.

[kasey_junk]

You are strongly implying that keeping the vulnerability secret is following of what you quoted. But that’s the rub. Many of us think the opposite. Not disclosing this would have been the violation.

[tptacek]

You're trying to extrapolate on this specific scenario from Wikipedia pages. Have you done any of this work? What have you done when you've reported a vulnerability to an upstream with dozens of downstreams? When your teammates have? You keep talking about "protocols" and "commonly followed practice" and "codes of ethics". Tell us more about the codes, protocols, and practices in your shop.

Nobody, for what it's worth, is arguing that major distros shouldn't have gotten some kind of notice. The problem is that the entity responsible for doing that isn't the vulnerability research lab. In fact, as a general procedural point, researchers can't go contact downstreams. They might be able to do so in the specific case of Linux, but you've tried to spin that possibility into a binding obligation derived from established practices, which: no. That's not a real thing.