This document provides the details on the Notary Project security policy and details the process surrounding security handling including a how to report a security vulnerability for anything within the Notary Project organization.
We're extremely grateful for security researchers and users who report vulnerabilities to the Notary Project community. All reports are thouroughly investigated by a set of Notary Project maintainers.
To make a report plese use the GitHub Security Vulnerability Disclosure process for each one of the Notary Project repositories. Here are the links to report vulnerabilities for each repository:
- Notation CLI Vulnerability Report
- Notation-Go Library Vulnerability Report
- Notation-Core-Go Library Vulnerability Report
- Notation Specification Vulnerability Report
- Notary Security Advisories
- TUF Security Advisories
You think you have found a vulnerability in any of the Notary Project sub-projects or a dependency of the Notary Project sub-projects.
The more details are included in the report, the easier will be for the maintainers to understand the vulnerability and provide mitigations. Our vulnerability disclosure template requires the following information:
- Short summary of the problem This should be a single sentence that clearly summarize the vulnerability.
- Detailed description of the vulnerability Provide all possible details about the vulnerability. Versions of binaries, pointing to incriminated source code, environment details etc. are essential to understand the vulnerability and its impact.
- Proof of Concept (PoC) steps Detailed steps to reproduce the vulnerability. This should include CLI commands, specific configuration details, library calls, etc.
- Impact Describe the impact of the vulnerability and who the impacted audience is.
Feel free to include anything else that you deem relevant for better understanding of the vulnerability.
- If a vulnerability has been found in an application that uses Notary Project tools, libraries, or specifications. Instead, contact the maintaners of the respective application.
- For guidance on securing Notary Project tools like Notation, please see the documentation or ask on the Slack channel.
- You are looking for help applying security updates.
Each report will be reviewed and receipt acknowledged within 3 business days. This will set off the security review process detailed below.
Any vulnerability information shared with the security team stays within the Notary Project and will not be shared with others unless it is necessary to fix the issue. Information is shared only on a need to know basis.
We ask that vulnerability reporter(s) act in good faith by not disclosing the issue to others. And we strive to act in good faith by acting swiftly, and by justly crediting the vulnerability reporter(s) in writing.
As the security issue moves through triage, identification, and release the reporter of the security vulnerability will be notified. Additional questions about the vulnerability may also be asked of the reporter.
A public disclosure of security vulnerabilities is released alongside release updates or details that fix the vulnerability. We try to fully disclose vulnerabilities once a mitigation strategy is available. Our goal is to perform a release and public disclosure quickly and in a timetable that works well for users. For example, a release may be ready on a Friday but for the sake of users may be delayed to a Monday.
CVEs will be assigned to vulnerabilities. Due to the process and time it takes to obtain a CVE ID, disclosures will happen first. Once the disclosure is public the process will begin to obtain a CVE ID. Once the ID has been assigned the disclosure will be updated.
If the vulnerability reporter would like their name and details shared as part of the disclosure process we are happy to. We will ask permission and for the way the reporter would like to be identified. We appreciate vulnerability reports and would like to credit reporters if they would like the credit.
Vulnerability disclosures are published in the Security Advisories sections in each repository. The disclosures will contain an overview, details about the vulnerability, a fix for the vulnerability that will typically be an update, and optionally a workaround if one is available.
Disclosures will be published on the same day as a release fixing the vulnerability after the release is published.
Here are the links to security advisories for each repository:
- Notation CLI Security Advisories
- Notation-Go Library Security Advisories
- Notation-Core-Go Library Security Advisories
- Notation Specification Security Advisories
- Notary Security Advisories
- TUF Security Advisories
The vulnerability reports are shared with all maintainers of the sub-project for which the vulnerability is reported. You can find the list of active maintainers and their contact details in the MAINTAINERS file in the respective sub-project repository.
The security team is made up of a subset of the Notary Project sub-project maintainers who are deemed most experienced and relevant to respond to the vulnerability report. Decision of the participants is made by the maintainers on a case-by-case basis and depends on the severity and sensitivity of the vulnerability reported. If the security team deems it applicable, they can add additional contributors with the goal to resolve the vulnerability in a timely manner.
Decisions of how the security team is selected and the names of the participants will be published after each vulnerability is disclosed.
- Members MUST be active sub-project or Notary Project organization maintainers on active (non-deprecated) Notary Project sub-projects as defined in the governance
- Members SHOULD engage in each reported vulnerability, at a minimum to make sure it is being handled
- Members MUST keep the vulnerability details private and only share on a need to know basis
New members are required to be active maintainers of Notary Project sub-projects who are willing to perform the responsibilities outlined above. The security team is a subset of the maintainers. Members can step down at any time and may join at any time.
From time to time, Notary Project sub-projects are deprecated. If at any time a security team member is found to be no longer be an active maintainer on active Notary Project sub-projects, this individual will be removed from the security team.
When a vulnerability comes in and is acknowledged, a team - including maintainers of the Notary Project sub-project affected - will be assembled to patch the vulnerability, release an update, and publish the vulnerability disclosure. This may expand beyond the security team as needed but will stay within the pool of Notary Project sub-project maintainers.
We would like to give credit to the Helm Community for using their security process and policy as an example.