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Jul 20
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OpenSSF Supports Movements toward Multi-Factor Authentication

By Blog

By: The OpenSSF Technical Advisory Council 

On July 8th, 2022, the Python Package Index (PyPI) announced a security key giveaway for maintainers of critical projects, where “critical” is a label given to the top 1% of packages on PyPI by download count during the prior six months. The giveaway included a statement of intent for PyPI to require multi-factor authentication (MFA) for maintainers of all critical projects “in the coming months.” This is similar to other efforts by GitHub, RubyGems, and npm to move to MFA. There was both commendation and concern for this effort.

We, the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), are a foundation working to improve the security of open source software (OSS). We’re comprised of organizations and individual OSS contributors from a variety of interests (including academic and commercial). We applaud these ongoing efforts because they help defend against the increasing attacks on OSS maintainers’ accounts that are occurring today.

Effort and concerns

The announcement from PyPI was met with mixed response. Since the announcement, many maintainers have enabled MFA for their accounts, required it for their projects, and taken advantage of the security key giveaway. Others raised valid concerns, such as the incomplete universality of the MFA requirement, as well as a trend of increasing requirements and expectations of maintainers to provide assurances around not only the quality and security of their open source, but also of who they are and how they code, for use of community infrastructure by open source maintainers.

There is a significant burden to repository operators in supporting MFA, particularly around support and account recovery. To that end, PyPI, like many others (notably npm and RubyGems), are following a phased rollout approach using a metric which enables the repository operators to control the support burden while providing a benefit to repository users.

Maintainer burden is also a legitimate concern. As OSS grows in popularity, maintainers are increasingly asked to support the software they created, in many cases being asked to go beyond what they signed up for (e.g., providing useful code “as is”). The OpenSSF advocates for automated tooling and encourages security measures which minimize maintainer burden wherever possible. When considering adding security features that require any additional effort (one-time or recurring) on the part of project maintainers, we advocate for implementing those features with extreme consideration to the maintainers. This is especially important because OSS normally does not come with guarantees (unless separately contracted) and consumers rarely pay maintainers. It is perfectly reasonable for maintainers to be concerned about potentially significant burdens, especially since they might perceive these efforts as some kind of unpaid, implicit guarantee to which they have not agreed to.

It is also worth noting that many repositories (including PyPI) are operated by OSS maintainers, and that account compromises present a significant burden on them and all other downstream users.

While no solution today is perfect, we strongly support PyPI’s efforts on their MFA rollout and hope the communities and maintainers will take advantage of this opportunity to lead the way in our first steps to more secure open source. In particular, PyPI organized a security key giveaway with sufficient supply to provide two keys (a primary and a backup) to each maintainer of critical packages. The security key implementation on PyPI uses the FIDO protocol, an existing standard. Furthermore, PyPI also supports using Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) as an additional factor, which is widely available at zero cost in applications for all major operating systems, including several open source implementations. In short, they are taking steps to minimize maintainer burden as much as they can with technology currently available to the community.

The case for MFA

It’s important to understand that these moves towards MFA are not occurring in a vacuum. There are increasingly many cases where attackers are taking over open source developers’ accounts and leveraging control of those accounts to change project’s source code and/or deployed packages, with a potentially devastating impact on users.

Account compromise is the second most common supply chain attack (after typosquatting) on open source packages for dynamic programming languages like JavaScript, Python, and Ruby [“Towards Measuring Supply Chain Attacks on Package Managers for Interpreted Languages”]. Account takeover is a direct focus of many attackers; “eslint-scope,” a package with millions of weekly downloads in npm, was compromised to steal credentials from users of the package.

Maintainer account takeovers can be drastically reduced when the maintainers use MFA. That’s because attackers are typically taking over accounts by stealing or cracking passwords, or by doing “SIM swapping” attacks on smartphones. MFA with either TOTP or physical tokens blocks these attacks. This is more than hypothetical: Microsoft found that 99.9% attempts at account takeover of their services are prevented by MFA.

Movement towards MFA is underway

It’s important to understand that the movement towards MFAs is already underway; it’s not unique to PyPI:

Many other OSS-related services have not announced a requirement for MFA, but they do have support for MFA (and have had it for years in some cases).

Generally users of OSS expect that the software source code and packages came from its OSS developers, not from attackers who take over developer’s accounts. MFA is a mechanism to help preserve that assumption.

Support from the OpenSSF

At the OpenSSF, our mission is to improve the security of the open source ecosystem for all participants: developers, users, and the critical infrastructure that enables our communities to interact and share.

We fully support the efforts of software repository operators in improving the trustworthiness of content in their repositories to help project maintainers and users. We believe that software repositories should continue to make changes which enable all users to have confidence in the integrity of the repository’s contents and in the mapping from the upstream source code to the artifacts in the repository.

The OpenSSF is already actively supporting PyPI and other software repositories through activities like the Securing Software Repositories working group and sponsorship and funding from the Alpha/Omega project that facilitates the implementation of much needed security features while minimizing hardship on maintainers. If you’re interested in helping to secure OSS, please join us through participation in the Securing Software Repositories working group or other OpenSSF activities!

May 12

The Linux Foundation and Open Source Software Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Gather Industry and Government Leaders for Open Source Software Security Summit II

By Press Release

10-Point Open Source and Software Supply Chain Security Mobilization Plan Released with Initial Pledges Surpassing $30M 

WASHINGTON, DC – May 12, 2022 – The Linux Foundation and the Open Source Software Security Foundation (OpenSSF) brought together over 90 executives from 37 companies and government leaders from the NSC, ONCD, CISA, NIST, DOE, and OMB to reach a consensus on key actions to take to improve the resiliency and security of open source software. 

Open Source Software Security Summit II, is a follow-up to the first Summit held January 13, 2022 that was led by the White House’s National Security Council. Today’s meeting was convened by the Linux Foundation and OpenSSF on the one year after the anniversary of President Biden’s Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity. 

The Linux Foundation and OpenSSF, with input provided from all sectors, delivered a first-of-its-kind plan to broadly address open source and software supply chain security. The Summit II plan outlines approximately $150M of funding over two years to rapidly advance well-vetted solutions to the ten major problems the plan identifies. The 10 streams of investment include concrete action steps for both more immediate improvements and building strong foundations for a more secure future. 

A subset of participating organizations have come together to collectively pledge an initial tranche of funding towards implementation of the plan. Those companies are Amazon, Ericsson, Google, Intel, Microsoft, and VMWare, pledging over $30M. As the plan evolves further more funding will be identified, and work will begin as individual streams are agreed upon.

This builds on the existing investments that the OpenSSF community members make into open source software. An informal poll of our stakeholders indicates they spend over $110M and employ nearly a hundred full-time equivalent employees focused on nothing but securing the open source software landscape. This plan adds to those investments.

KEY QUOTES

Jim Zemlin – Executive Director, Linux Foundation:  “On the one year anniversary of President Biden’s executive order, today we are here to respond with a plan that is actionable, because open source is a critical component of our national security and it is fundamental to billions of dollars being invested in software innovation today. We have a shared obligation to upgrade our collective cybersecurity resilience and improve trust in software itself.  This plan represents our unified voice and our common call to action. The most important task ahead of us is leadership.”

Brian Behlendorf – Executive Director, Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF):  “What we are doing here together is converging a set of ideas and principles of what is broken out there and what we can do to fix it.  The plan we have put together represents the 10 flags in the ground as the base for getting started.  We are eager to get further input and commitments that move us from plan to action.”

Anne Neurenberger, Deputy National Security Advisor, Cyber & Emerging Tech at National Security Council, The White House:

“President Biden signed the Executive Order on Cybersecurity last year to ensure the software our government relies on is secure and reliable, including software that runs our critical infrastructure.  Earlier this year, the White House convened a meeting between government and industry participants to improve the security of Open Source software.  The Open Source security foundation has followed up on the work at that meeting and convened participants from across industry to make substantial progress.  We are appreciative of all participants’ work on this important issue.”

Atlassian

Adrian Ludwig, Chief Trust Officer

“Open source software is critical to so many of the tools and applications that are used by thousands of development teams worldwide. Consequently, the security of software supply chains has been elevated to the top of most organizations’ priorities in the wake of recent high-profile vulnerabilities in open source software. Only through concerted efforts by industry, government and other stakeholders can we ensure that open source innovation continues to flourish in a secure environment. This is why we are happy to be participating in OpenSSF, where we can collaborate on key initiatives that raise awareness and drive action around the crucial issues facing software supply chain security today. We’re excited to be a key contributor to driving meaningful change and we are optimistic about what we can achieve through our partnership with OpenSSF and like-minded organizations within its membership.”

Cisco

Eric Wenger, Senior Director, Technology Policy, Cisco Systems

“Open source software (OSS) is a foundational part of our modern computing infrastructure. As one of the largest users of and contributors to OSS, Cisco makes significant investments in time and resources to improve the security of widely-used OSS projects. Today’s effort shows the stakeholder community’s shared commitment to making open-source development more secure in ways that are measurable and repeatable.”

Dell

Jim Medica, Technologist in Dell Technologies’ Office of the CTO:

“Never before has software security been a more critical part of the global supply chain. Today, in a meeting led by Anne Neuberger [linkedin.com], Deputy National Security Advisor for Cyber and Emerging Technology, Dell and my Open Source Security Foundation colleagues committed our software security expertise to execute the Open Source Software Security Mobilization Plan. Dell’s best and brightest engineers will engage with peers to develop risk-based metrics and scoring dashboards, digital signature methodologies for code signing, and Software Bill of Materials (SBoM) tools – all to address the grand challenge of open source software security. This is an excellent example of the leadership Dell provides to proactively impact software security and open-source security solutions, and reinforces our commitment to the open source software community, to our supply chain and to our national security.”

Ericsson

Per Beming, Head of Standard and Industry Initiatives

“Ericsson is one of the leading promoters and supporters of the open source ecosystem, accelerating the adoption and industry alignment in a number of key technology areas. The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is an industry-wide initiative with the backing of the Linux Foundation with the objective of improving supply chain security in the open source ecosystem.

 “As a board member of OpenSSF, we are committed to open source security and we are fully supportive of the mobilization plan with the objective of improving supply chain security in the open source ecosystem. Being an advocate and adopter of global standards, the initiatives aim to strengthen open source security from a global perspective.”

GitHub

Mike Hanley, Chief Security Officer

“Securing the open source ecosystem starts with empowering developers and open source maintainers with tools and best practices that are instrumental to securing the software supply chain. As home to 83M developers around the world, GitHub is uniquely positioned and committed to advance these efforts, and we’ve continued our investments to help developers and maintainers realize improved security outcomes through initiatives including 2FA enforcement on GitHub.com and npm, open sourcing the GitHub Advisory Database, financial enablement for developers through GitHub Sponsors, and free security training through the GitHub Security Lab. 

“The security of open source is critical to the security of all software. Summit II has been an important next step in bringing the private and public sector together again and we look forward to continuing our partnerships to make a significant impact on the future of software security.”

Google

Eric Brewer, VP of Infrastructure at Google Cloud & Google Fellow

“We’re thankful to the Linux Foundation and OpenSSF for convening the community today to discuss the open source software security challenges we’re facing and how we can work together across the public and private sectors to address them. Google is committed to supporting many of the efforts we discussed today, including the creation of our new Open Source Maintenance Crew, a team of Google engineers who will work closely with upstream maintainers on improving the security of critical open source projects, and by providing support to the community through updates on key projects like SLSA, Scorecards; and Sigstore, which is now being used by the Kubernetes project. Security risks will continue to span all software companies and open source projects and only an industry-wide commitment involving a global community of developers, governments and businesses can make real progress. Google will continue to play our part to make an impact.”

IBM

Jamie Thomas, Enterprise Security Executive

“Today, we had the opportunity to share our IBM Policy Lab’s recommendations on how understanding the software supply chain is key to improving security. We believe that providing greater visibility in the software supply chain through SBoMs ( Software Bill of Materials) and using the Open Source Software  community as a valuable resource to encourage passionate developers to create, hone their skills, and contribute to the public good can help strengthen our resiliency. It’s great to see the strong commitment from the community to work together to secure open source software. Security can always be strengthened and I would like to thank Anne Neuberger today  for her deep commitment and open, constructive, technical dialogue that will help us pave the way to enhancing OSS security. ”

Intel

Greg Lavender, Chief Technology Officer and General Manager of the Software and Advanced Technology Group

“Intel has long played a key role in contributing to open source. I’m excited about our role in the future building towards Pat’s Open Ecosystem vision. As we endeavor to live into our core developer tenets of openness, choice and trust – software security is at the heart of creating the innovation platforms of tomorrow.”

Melissa Evers, Vice President, Software and Advanced Technology, General Manager of Strategy to Execution

“Intel commends the Linux Foundation in their work advancing open source security. Intel has a history of leadership and investment in open source software and secure computing: over the last five years, Intel has invested over $250M in advancing open-source software security. As we approach the next phase of Open Ecosystem initiatives, we intend to maintain and grow this commitment by double digit percentages continuing to invest in software security technologies, as well as advance improved security and remediation practices within the community and among those who consume software from the community.”

JFrog

Stephen Chin, Vice President of Developer Relations

“While open source has always been seen as a seed for modernization, the recent rise of software supply chain attacks has demonstrated we need a more hardened process for validating open-source repositories. As we say at JFrog, ‘with great software comes great responsibility’, and we take that job seriously. As a designated CNA, the JFrog Security Research team constantly monitors open-source software repositories for malicious packages that may lead to widespread software supply chain attacks and alerts the community accordingly. Building on that, JFrog is proud to collaborate with the Linux Foundation and other OpenSSF members on designing a set of technologies, processes, accreditations, and policies to help protect our nation’s critical infrastructure while nurturing one of the core principles of open source – innovation.” 

JPMorgan Chase

Pat Opet, Chief Information Security Officer

“We are proud to have worked with Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and its members to create the new Open Source Software Security Mobilization Plan, This plan will help to address security issues in the software supply chain which is critical to making the world’s software safer and more secure for everyone.”

Microsoft

Mark Russinovich, CTO, Microsoft Azure

“Open source software is core to nearly every company’s technology strategy. Collaboration and investment across the open source ecosystem will strengthen and sustain security for everyone. Microsoft’s commitment to $5M in funding for OpenSSF supports critical cross-industry collaboration. We’re encouraged by the community, industry, and public sector collaboration at today’s summit and the benefit this will have to strengthen supply chain security.”

OWASP Foundation

Andrew van der Stock, Executive Director

“OWASP’s mission is to improve the state of software security around the world. We are contributing to the Developer Education and Certification, as well addressing the Executive Order for improving the state and adoption of SBOMs. In particular, we would like to see a single, consumable standard across the board.” 

Mark Curphey (founder of OWASP) and John Viega (author of the first book on software security), Stream Coordinators

“We’re excited to see the industry’s willingness to come together on a single ‘bill of materials’ format. It has the potential to help the entire industry solve many important problems, including drastically improving response speed for when major new issues in open source software emerge.” 

SAP

Tim McKnight, SAP Executive Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer

“SAP is proud to be a part of the Open Source Software Security Summit II and contribute to the important dialogue on the topic of Open Source software security.

“SAP is firmly committed to supporting the execution of the Open Source Software Security Mobilization Plan and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with our government, industry, and academic partners.”

Sonatype

Brian Fox, CTO of Sonatype and stewards of Maven Central.

“It’s rare to see vendors, competitors, government, and diverse open source ecosystems all come together like they have today. It shows how massive a problem we have to solve in securing open source, and highlights that no one entity can solve it alone. The Open Source Software Security Mobilization Plan is a great step toward bringing our community together with a number of key tactics, starting with securing OSS production, which will make the entire open source ecosystem stronger and safer.” 

Wipro

Andrew Aitken, Global Head of Open Source

“Wipro is committed to helping ensure the safety of the software supply chain through its engagement with OpenSSF and other industry initiatives and is ideally suited to enhance efforts to provide innovative tooling, secure coding best practices and industry and government advocacy to improve vulnerability remediation.

“As the only global systems integrator in the OpenSSF ecosystem and in line with its support of OpenSSF objectives, Wipro will commit to training 100 of its cybersecurity experts to the level of trainer status in LF and OpenSSF secure coding best practices and to host training workshops with its premier global clients and their developer and cybersecurity teams.

“Further, Wipro will increase its public contributions to Sigstore and the SLSA framework by integrating them into its own solutions and building a community of 50+ contributors to these critical projects.”

KEY BACKGROUND

Three Goals of the 10-Point Plan

  1. Securing Open Source Security Production
    1. Make baseline secure software development education and certification the new normal for pro OSS developers
    2. Establish a public, vendor-neutral, objective-metrics based risk assessment dashboard for the top 10,000 open source components.
    3. Accelerate the adoption of digital signatures on software releases
    4. Eliminate root causes of many vulnerabilities through replacement of non-memory-safe languages.
  2. Improving Vulnerability Discovery and Remediation
    1. Accelerate discovery of new vulnerabilities by maintainers and experts.
    2. Establish the corps of “volunteer firefighter” security experts to assist open source projects during critical times.
    3. Conduct third-party code reviews (and any necessary remediation work) of 200 of the most-critical open source software components yearly
    4. Coordinate industry-wide data sharing to improve the research that helps determine the most critical open source software.
  3. Shorten ecosystem Patching Response Time
    1. Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) Everywhere – improve SBOM tooling and training to drive adoption
    2. Enhance the 10 most critical open source security build systems, package managers, and distribute systems with better supply chain security tools and best practices.

The 10-Point Plan Summarized (available in full here)

  1. Security Education Deliver baseline secure software development education and certification to all. 
  2. Risk Assessment Establish a public, vendor-neutral, objective-metrics-based risk assessment dashboard for the top 10,000 (or more) OSS components.
  3. Digital Signatures Accelerate the adoption of digital signatures on software releases.
  4. Memory Safety Eliminate root causes of many vulnerabilities through replacement of non-memory-safe languages.
  5. Incident Response Establish the OpenSSF Open Source Security Incident Response Team, security experts who can step in to assist open source projects during critical times when responding to a vulnerability.
  6. Better Scanning Accelerate discovery of new vulnerabilities by maintainers and experts through advanced security tools and expert guidance.
  7. Code Audits Conduct third-party code reviews (and any necessary remediation work) of up to 200 of the most-critical OSS components once per year. 
  8. Data Sharing Coordinate industry-wide data sharing to improve the research that helps determine the most critical OSS components.
  9. SBOMs Everywhere Improve SBOM tooling and training to drive adoption. 
  10. Improved Supply Chains Enhance the 10 most critical OSS build systems, package managers, and distribution systems with better supply chain security tools and best practices.

Media Contact
Edward Cooper
openssf@babelpr.com

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