Backed by Google, a group of respected computer security pros launch
oCERT, an effort to be the go-to place for security incident response
for open-source projects.

Worried about the state of security incident response among
open-source software projects, a group of computer security
professionals has launched an ambitious effort to manage the
coordination of vulnerability warnings and patch release information
between open-source vendors large and small.

The new organization, called oCERT (Open Source Computer Emergency
Response Team), emerged from stealth mode at this year's CanSecWest
security conference with a grand plan to be the go-to place for
security incident response when an open-source software project is
affected.

Backed by search technology giant Google, security consulting firm
Inverse Path and the Open Source Lab at Oregon State University, oCERT
wants to manage advance vulnerability warnings, offer resources for
analyzing and fixing software flaws, coordinate the patch release
notification process and hold tardy vendors to the fire when security
fixes are delayed.

"Small open-source projects often don't have any form of security
handling but the same code they manage [is] included by bigger
projects and distributions. When there's a compromise, there's no
proper coordination and that's not acceptable," says Andrea Barisani,
oCERT founder and project coordinator.

The Downside to Diversity

Barisani, a well-respected researcher who maintains several small
open-source security projects, believes oCERT can fill the gap by
providing resources to small vendors and active coordination with
larger distributions that might be affected by a security flaw or
compromise.

"Open source is wonderful for the diversity of software and projects
that can affect users with the most advanced technology, but this
extreme diversity has the downside of missing global coordination, and
quality is not always the best," he said in an interview with eWEEK.
"When it comes to security, this is a problem."

Barisani added: "We wanted to create a public organization that would
help in coordinating security issues like vulnerabilities and
compromises. Only very few security issues affect only a specific
vendor in the open-source world. Most of the time, code is re-used all
over the place and that's why there's this need for coordination."

In the first week since the launch of oCERT, several big-name vendors
and distributions have signed on as active members. They include
Gentoo, Mandriva, OpenBSD, OpenSSH, Nmap and Annvix.

Barisani said all the major players in the open-source software world
will be approached to join and actively participate in the oCERT
effort. To qualify for oCERT membership, an open-source distribution
or project must be active and must have a good record in being
proactive and responsive to dealing with security-related problems. A
member must also have an active security contact and must agree to the
oCERT disclosure policy. Members must also agree to avoid silently
fixing vulnerabilities without proper disclosure.

The idea is to mimic the CERT security incident response teams around
the world by offering help to both large infrastructures and smaller
projects that can't afford a full-blown security team. The goal,
Barisani said, is to reduce the impact of compromises on small
projects with little or no infrastructure security and, more
importantly, avoid the ripple effect of badly communicated or poorly
handled compromises.

He said oCERT will also provide security vulnerability mediation for
the security community, maintain reliable security contacts between
registered projects and vulnerability researchers who need to get in
touch with a specific project regarding infrastructure security
issues.

oCERT has already put together a high-profile team that includes Tavis
Ormandy and Will Drewry from the Google Security Team; Barisani and
Rob Holland from Inverse Path and Marcel Holtmann from Intel. Solar
Designer from Openwall and Dragos Ruiu from the SecWest security
conferences form part of the organization's advisory board.

With this list of renowned security experts, Barisani believes oCERT
can emerge as a credible organization to help in assessing whether a
vulnerability submission is actually a real security concern.

Barisani, an active member of the Gentoo Foundation's security and
infrastructure teams, has first-hand experience dealing with
security-related emergencies.

Back in 2003, he found himself smack dab in the middle of a major
compromise of one of the servers that make up the rsync.gentoo.org
rotation. During that incident, Barisani was closely involved with
containing the damage, performing live analysis of the hijacked server
to look for lost data and evaluate the visibility of other systems in
the network to reduce the risk of further compromises.

The rsync.gentoo.org issue was resolved in 36 hours and is often cited
as one of the best collaboration and response examples in the
open-source community but, five years later, there are still major
gaps that need filling.

"Let's just say that there's a good history of security issues in the
open-source world that could have been handled better and there's also
a good history of compromises which are worrying," he said, declining
to provide details on vendors with a poor history of responding to
security incidents.

He insists oCERT will be tough on vendors that take too long to fix
software vulnerabilities. "We're committed to keeping things moving as
fast as possible and we have a disclosure policy that enforces an
upper limit on disclosure time," Barisani said.

"If a vendor is lazy and takes six months to fix something, we won't
tolerate it," he declared.

The oCERT policy is to give a vendor an embargo time of 60 days to
create and release a security patch. "We'll always have a fixed limit
specifically to prevent the problem of lazy handling [of vulnerability
warnings]. We will be stricter if we think it's necessary," Barisani
said.

-- Vinayak
--
http://www.linkedin.com/in/VinayakH

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Security-Pros-Launch-Open-Source-CERT/

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