Security Tracking Bugs

Using Tracking Bugs

Handling tracking bugs in Bugzilla

Parent Bug

Let's imagine a situation where a security flaw was found in yoyodine package. A member of Fedora Security Response team enters it in bugzilla under Security Response Team. Then he requests a CVE identifier for the issue. As he found the mention of the bug while reading a public mailing list, he creates a public bug. When he gets the CVE for the bug, he adds it to the begining of the Summary line and sets an appropriate alias=CVE number.

• Parent bug is entered in the Security Response product
• Parent bug's subject begins with the CVE
• Parent bug is publicly viewable
• Parent bug has an alias=CVE
• Parent bug is assigned to the Fedora Security Response team
• Parent bug has a Security keyword set

Tracking Bugs

As the bug obviously affects yoyodine package, he triages it and founds that it affects all supported Fedora releases, and also EPEL. He creates appropriate tracking bugs (with a script). Later it is found out that the vulnerable code is reused in foobar package that is present in EPEL5 (common situation with xpdf code). He adds appropriate tracking bug.

• Tracking bug belongs to Fedora Project Contributors group
• Tracking bug is depended on by the Parent bug
• Tracking bug is entered into respective Product/Component/Version where the flaw needs to be addresed
• Tracking bug is assigned to the developer
• The description of the tracking bug doesn't contain information about the flaw, but rather refers to the Parent bug and describes how to handle the flaw
• Tracking bug has a Security keyword set

The situation then looks like this:

(public, alias=CVE-2007-9999)
|- #222222: CVE-2007-4631 Yoyodine stack overflow via a long do_nothing() argument [FC7] 
|  (group Fedora Project Contributors, component=yoyodine)
|- #333333: CVE-2007-4631 Yoyodine stack overflow via a long do_nothing() argument [F8] 
|  (group Fedora Project Contributors, component=yoyodine)
|- #444444: CVE-2007-4631 Yoyodine stack overflow via a long do_nothing() argument [EPEL5] 
|  (group Fedora Project Contributors, component=foobar)

Handling tracking bugs in Bodhi

The procedure

The maintainer commits the fixes, builds packages and creates an update request. He refers to both parent bug and tracking bug. Bodhi is able to identify that the bug is a tracking bug and doesn't include it in the new package announce mail. Bodhi closes the tracking bug, and in case all other bugs that Parent depends on it also closes the Parent. To keep track, Bodhi adds comments to both Parent and Tracking bug.

Proposed changes to Bodhi

These proposed changes have been implemented. -lmacken

This might include things that are already implemented in Bodhi that I am not aware of.

• Bodhi shouldn't include the bug belonging to Fedora Project Contributors in the mail (Note: Wouldn't it be better to identify a tracking bug with a dedicated keyword rather than group membership?)
• Bodhi should close the bug only in case all bugs it depends on are closed and it is not in NEW state
• There is no need to refer to CVE from Bodhi, security bugzillas allways refer to CVE themselves
• Bodhi should include the Summary of the bugzillas rather than just the number, so that reference to CVE is visible in the mail
• Bodhi should add comments to the bugs when the update is created, and pushed to testing, not just when it gets live. (This would save the SRT from unnecessary pings to developers and keep users updated)

This would change the References section in update announce mails from:

References:

[ 1 ]  Bug #284511
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=284511
[ 2 ]  CVE-2007-4727
http://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2007-4727

to:

References:

[ 1 ]  CVE-2007-4727 FastCGI header overrun in lighttpd's mod_fastcgi
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=284511

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