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The World’s Major Technology Providers Converge to Improve the Security of Software Supply Chains

By Blog

Imagine you have created an open source project that has become incredibly popular.  Thousands, if not millions, of developers worldwide, rely on the lines of code that you wrote. You have become an accidental hero of that community — people love your code, contribute to improving it, requesting new features, and encouraging others to use it. Life is amazing, but with great power and influence comes great responsibility.

When code is buggy, people complain. When performance issues crop up in large scale implementations, it needs to be addressed. When security vulnerabilities are discovered — because no code or its dependencies are always perfect — they need to be remediated quickly to keep your community safe.  

To help open source projects better address some of the responsibilities tied to security, many communities hosted by the Linux Foundation have invested countless hours, resources, and code into some important efforts. We’ve worked to improve the security of the Linux kernel, hosted Let’s Encrypt and sigstore, helped steward the ISO standardization for SPDX, and brought together a community building metrics for OSS health and risk through the CHAOSS project — among many others.

Today, we are taking steps with many leading organizations around the world to enhance the security of software supply chains. The Linux Foundation has raised $10 million in new investments to expand and support the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and its initiatives. This cross-industry collaboration brings together an ecosystem to collectively identify and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in open source software and develop improved tooling, training, research, best practices, and vulnerability disclosure practices. We are also proud to announce that open source luminary, Brian Behlendorf, will serve the OpenSSF community as General Manager. 

Financial commitments for OpenSSF include Premier members such as AWS, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Ericsson, Facebook, Fidelity, GitHub, Google, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Red Hat, Snyk, and VMware. Additional commitments come from General members, including Aiven, Anchore, Apiiro, AuriStor, Codethink, Cybertrust, Deepfence, Devgistics, DTCC, GitLab, Goldman Sachs, JFrog, Nutanix, StackHawk, Tencent, TideLift, and Wind River.

To learn more about how to join the OpenSSF or to get involved in one of its six working groups, listen in to this brief introduction from Brian Behlendorf recorded this week at KubeCon:https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mjsb6Z1Weto?feature=oembed&wmode=opaque&rel=0

In 2021, the Linux Foundation and its community will continue to support education and share resources critical to improving open source cybersecurity.  For example, this week, we also hosted SupplyChainSecurityCon, where the SLSA and sigstore projects were heavily featured.

If you are an open source software developer, user, or other community participant who just wants to help further protect the software that accelerates innovation around the world, please consider joining one of our six OpenSSF working groups, or suggest a new working group that addresses gaps in software supply chain security needs.

You can follow the latest news from OpenSSF here on our blog, Twitter (@TheOpenSSF), and LinkedIn.

Open Source Security Foundation Raises $10 Million in New Commitments to Secure Software Supply Chains

By Press Release

Industry leaders from technology, financial services, telecom, and cybersecurity sectors respond to Biden’s Executive Order, commit to a more secure future for software; open source luminary Brian Behlendorf becomes general manager

LOS ANGELES, Calif – KubeCon – October 13, 2021 –  The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization enabling mass innovation through open source, today announced it has raised $10 million in new investments to expand and support the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a cross-industry collaboration that brings together multiple open source software initiatives under one umbrella to identify and fix cybersecurity vulnerabilities in open source software and develop improved tooling, training, research, best practices, and vulnerability disclosure practices. Open source luminary Brian Behlendorf will serve the OpenSSF community as General Manager. 

Financial commitments from Premier members include Amazon, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Ericsson, Facebook, Fidelity, GitHub, Google, IBM, Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Oracle, Red Hat, Snyk, and VMware. Additional commitments come from General members Aiven, Anchore, Apiiro, AuriStor, Codethink, Cybertrust Japan, Deepfence, Devgistics, DTCC, GitLab, Goldman Sachs, JFrog, Nutanix, StackHawk, Tencent, TideLift, and Wind River.

“This pan-industry commitment is answering the call from the White House to raise the baseline for our collective cybersecurity wellbeing, as well as ‘paying it forward’ to open source communities to help them create secure software from which we all benefit,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation. “We’re pleased to have Brian Behlendorf’s leadership and extensive expertise on building and sustaining large communities and technical projects applied to this work. With the tremendous growth and pervasiveness of open source software, building cybersecurity practices and programs that scale is our biggest task at hand.”

According to industry reports (“2021 State of the Software Supply Chain,” by Sonatype), software supply chain attacks have increased 650 percent and are having a severe impact on business operations. In the wake of increasing security breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cybercrimes tied to open source software, government leaders worldwide are calling for private and public collaboration. Because open source software makes up at least 70 percent of all software (“2020 Open Source Security and Risk Analysis Report” by Synopsys), the OpenSSF offers the natural, neutral, and pan-industry forum to accelerate the security of the software supply chain. 

“There has never been a more exciting time to work in the open source community, and software supply chain security has never needed more of our attention,” said Brian Behlendorf, general manager, Open Source Security Foundation. “There is no single silver bullet for securing software supply chains.  Research, training, best practices, tooling and collaboration require the collective power of thousands of critical minds across our community. Funding for OpenSSF gives us the forum and resources to do this work.”

The OpenSSF is home to a variety of open source software, open standards, and other open content work for improving security. Examples include:

  • Security Scorecard – a fully automated tool that assesses a number of important heuristics (“checks”) associated with software security
  • Best Practices Badge – a set of Core Infrastructure Initiative best practices for producing higher-quality secure software providing a way for OSS projects to demonstrate through badges that they are following them
  • Security Policies Allstar provides a set and enforce security policies on repositories or organizations
  • Research – studies on open source software and critical security vulnerabilities conducted in association with the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) (e.g., a preliminary census and FOSS Contributor Survey)

For more information about OpenSSF, please visit: https://openssf.org/

Premier Member Quotes

AWS

“Open source software plays an increasingly crucial role across the whole landscape of information security. Convening industry leaders to invest in developing policies, practices, tooling, and education around open source security benefits us all. AWS was a founding member of the Core Infrastructure Initiative in 2014, and we will now build on the relationships and investments that continue the mission by joining OpenSSF as a Premier Member. With our partners in this initiative, and as active participants in many open source communities, we will help raise the bar in the security of open source software,” said Mark Ryland, Director of the Office of the CISO at AWS.

Cisco

“OpenSSF will enable the community, across industries, to build tools and practices to secure the software supply chain for open source and beyond. This is crucial to the future of API and application security, which are fast becoming a primary attack vector for all business going forward,” says Vijoy Pandey, VP of Emerging Technologies & Incubation at Cisco. “At Cisco, we believe the application experience is the new brand, which demands better app velocity, trust, security, and availability. This belief drives our deep investment in application security and full-stack observability, which is why joining forces with this prestigious foundation and group as a trusted advisor and partner was a no-brainer for us.”

Dell Technologies 

“The Linux Foundation’s focus on security is fundamental to addressing the increasing risks associated with software,” said John Roese, Dell Technologies’ Global Chief Technology Officer. “The Open Source Security Foundation’s work will help us collectively make sure critical software programs and the end to end software delivery pipeline is secure and trustworthy.”

Ericsson

“As a leader in mobile communication, pioneering and driving 5G globally, security is at the core of the network infrastructure we build and deliver to our customers. In an industry increasingly built around open source and open standardization we are fully committed to address cybersecurity vulnerabilities in a collaborative effort. We are proud to join the Open Source Security Foundation as a founding member and we look forward to continue to work with the community and wider industry for a secure software supply chain, including the open source components,” says Erik Ekudden, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Ericsson.

Fidelity

“Open Source Software plays a critical role in Fidelity’s technology strategy. We are proud to be part of the Open Source Security Foundation and to work with others to ensure that Open Source solutions and their supply chains are safe, secure, and reliable, enabling Fidelity to better serve our customers and clients,” said John Andrukonis, SVP, Fidelity Application Architecture.

GitHub

“The world runs on software, and most of that software includes and relies on open source,” said Mike Hanley, Chief Security Officer at GitHub. “As the home to more than 65 million developers around the world, we’re excited to continue partnering across the open source community and with other Open Source Security Foundation members to power a more secure, trustworthy future that will benefit everyone.”

Google

“We are doubling down on our OpenSSF commitment in the wake of rising open source software supply chain attacks and President Biden’s Executive Order,” said Eric Brewer, vice president of infrastructure and fellow at Google. “This decision is part of our White House pledge to spend $100 million to fund open source security foundations and follows a variety of investments we’ve made to support developers and security engineers across the public and private sectors. The OpenSSF is the best place for cross-industry leadership for these very challenging topics, and we look forward to working with the US and other governments to improve security worldwide.” 

IBM 

“IBM is deeply focused on developing and building highly secure hybrid cloud, AI and quantum-safe technologies that are designed to protect our clients’ most sensitive workloads both today and into the future,” said Jamie Thomas, General Manager, Strategy & Development and IBM Enterprise Security Executive. “As a long-time open source leader, IBM looks forward to working with the OSSF, our industry partners, and open source communities towards addressing the ever-increasing challenge of hardware and software open source supply chain security.”

Intel

“As a long-standing member of the open source software community, Intel contributes daily in the upstream projects we collaborate with,” said Greg Lavender, senior vice president, CTO, and general manager of Software and Advanced Technology at Intel Corporation. “Along with the Linux Foundation, we believe the Open Security Foundation (OpenSSF) is a unique opportunity to engage in projects and efforts focused on improving the quality and security for today and our future. Intel remains committed to providing contributions that benefit open source software supply chains and improving the security posture of critical projects on which our ecosystem depends.”

JPMorgan Chase

“JPMorgan Chase is deeply committed to working with the open source community to solve our most pressing security challenges. As a founding member of the Open Source Security Foundation, we have worked together to improve the security of open source and the integrity of all software. We commend the US Government’s recent initiative to raise awareness on this pressing topic and call to action the technology community to solve one of the most complex security challenges of our time.  We welcome the new members to OpenSSF and look forward to continuing the journey of innovation and bringing meaningful change to how we build, secure, and validate software,” said Pat Opet, Chief Information Security Officer, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Microsoft

“As open source is now core to nearly every company’s technology strategy, securing open source software is an essential part of securing the supply chain for every company, including our own. All of us at Microsoft are excited to participate with others in contributing new investments to the Open Source Security Foundation and we look forward to building more secure software through community-driven efforts to create solutions that will help us all,” said Mark Russinovich, Azure CTO and Technical Fellow, Microsoft.

Morgan Stanley

“Whether we are leveraging open source in our own code, contribute to OSS projects, or consume OSS via technology we procure and utilize, the safety and security of OSS and the creation of a trustworthy supply chain is critical to all businesses. To that end, we are delighted to join the Linux Foundation’s Open Source Security Foundation project to collaborate with our cross-industry partners to improve the security, safety and trust in the OSS ecosystem,” said Neil Allen, Global Head of Cyber Security Engineering, Morgan Stanley.

Oracle

“As a contributing member of the open source software community and an inaugural Linux Foundation member, Oracle has a large number of developers that contribute to third-party open source projects daily,” said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of software development, Oracle. “Oracle looks forward to participating in the Open Source Security Foundation and working with other members to continue to strengthen the software supply chain, helping customers work more securely.”   

Red Hat

“Open source is pervasive in software solutions of all kinds, and cybersecurity attack rates are on the rise. Our customers look to Red Hat to provide trust and enhanced security in our open source based portfolio. Open source and community collaboration is the best way to solve big, industry-wide challenges, such as open source supply chain security. And that’s why we’re excited to join together with the Linux Foundation and other industry leaders so we can continue to improve the technologies and practices to build a more secure future from open source software,” said Chris Wright, senior vice president and CTO, Red Hat.

Snyk

“Open source is built by millions of empowered developers, who also need to secure this critical foundation of the digital world,” said Guy Podjarny, Founder & President, Snyk. “The vital work of the Linux Foundation and the OpenSSF ensures we collectively live up to this responsibility. The Snyk community is fully committed to this important, collaborative effort and we look forward to working closely with the other OpenSSF members to better secure OSS so it can continue to safely fuel innovation.”

VMware

“Every company that uses software should be concerned about their software supply chain,” said Kit Colbert, chief technology officer, VMware. “For two-plus years, VMware has engaged in contributions to open source projects in the broader software supply chain security space and invested in initiatives to help customers further strengthen their security policies and processes. As a member of the Open Source Security Foundation, we’re committed to collaborating across the industry to drive increased level of software supply chain security.”

General Member Quotes 

Apiiro

“Software supply chain risks are becoming pervasive, with the potential to slow application delivery and stunt innovation,” commented John Leon, VP of Business Development at Apiiro. “Managing application risk has become increasingly complex and requires visibility across the SDLC – including the supply chain. Apiiro is excited to partner with the open source community and support the Linux Foundation and OpenSSF as they power the collaboration that is vital to securing software.”

AuriStor

“AuriStor’s founders have contributed to the standardization of security protocols and open source development of security first software for more than 35 years. We view the OpenSSF, its working groups and projects, and those that participate in them as crucial to improving the security of every industry, service, and home. The OpenSSF has the potential to make a significant difference in everyone’s future. We encourage all members of the software development community to contribute.“, said AuriStor Founder and CEO Jeffrey Altman.

Devgistics

“We seized the opportunity to join this foundation because OpenSSF offers a real industry-neutral forum to accelerate the hardening and security of the software supply chain. Devgistics (formerly InfoSiftr) provides critical enhancements to the world’s most popular open-source repository. Devgistics has been involved in many free and open-source initiatives for years, including being a Moby (Docker Engine) maintainer, providing support to the Docker/container ecosystem, and serving in the Open Container Initiative. Devgistics continues to contribute cutting-edge solutions for security-conscious clients like the US Air Force,” said Devgistics Founder and President Justin Steele. 

DTCC

“DTCC is committed to developing highly resilient and secure code to safeguard the financial marketplace. DTCC is proud to be part of the OpenSSF community and looks forward to partnering with our fellow members on safe, secure and reliable computing,” said Ajoy Kumar, Head of Tech/Cyber Risk at DTCC.

GitLab

“As organizations modernize software development and shift security left, GitLab believes that open source will play a key role in fostering this modernization and delivering secure software with speed to the market,” said Eric Johnson, CTO at GitLab. “Supporting the Open Source Security Foundation aligns with GitLab’s mission of enabling everyone to contribute, and we look forward to supporting, collaborating, and sharing our expertise in implementing security in GitLab’s DevOps Platform to the OpenSSF community.”

Goldman Sachs

“Continuing to secure the software supply chain, in particular the many critical open source projects foundational to any modern organization’s IT architecture, is a top strategic imperative for Goldman Sachs, our peers, partners, and clients in financial services, the technology ecosystem, and the wider economy,” said Atte Lahtiranta, chief technology officer at Goldman Sachs. “This work cannot be done in individual organizational silos. We instead need to work collaboratively, across both the private and public sector, together with open source maintainers and contributors, to answer the call to action that is the recent cybersecurity executive order. The OpenSSF will provide an essential forum and associated infrastructure to allow us to share leading practices, develop improved tooling, and work together to better protect our digital infrastructure.”

JFrog

“Open-source software is the backbone of hundreds of thousands of today’s applications, making it critical that we do our best to flag new vulnerabilities and insecure components fast—before they compromise businesses or critical infrastructure,” said Asaf Karas, JFrog Security CTO. “We’re happy to expand our membership with the Linux Foundation and support this cross-industry collaboration to identify and fix open source security vulnerabilities, strengthen tools, and promote best practices to ensure developers can easily shift left and bake-in security from the start of application planning and design — all the way to software deployment, distribution, and runtime.”

Nutanix

“The world runs on open source software and Nutanix is eager to help ensure its security. This can only be achieved through broad industry collaboration. We believe in the founding vision of the Open Source Security Foundation. We hope to help empower open source developers and better protect all of our customers with the partnership it enables. As members of the Open Source Software Foundation, we join other industry leaders in strengthening the software supply chain security we all rely upon,” said Rajiv Mirani, Chief Technology Officer at Nutanix.

StackHawk

“Software development is moving faster than ever before. The industry needs tooling and processes to ensure that security can keep up with today’s pace of development. StackHawk is excited about the work that the Open Source Security Foundation is doing to improve security and we are proud to continue as a member,” said Joni Klippert, StackHawk Founder & CEO.

Tencent

“IT development to date, an increasing number of critical businesses and core competencies have been built on open source, and this trend will continue. As an important part of the software supply chain, open source security plays an important role in the entire software supply chain. Tencent Cloud has always been keen to contribute code and technology to open source projects, and also maintains a continuous huge investment in security. It is very gratifying to see that OpenSSF can be established, and we look forward to working closely with industry  partners to improve the security level of open source software and strengthen the software supply chain security,” said KK Dong, Chief Security Officer at Tencent Cloud.

Wind River

“As the dependency on open-source software becomes increasingly pervasive, the Open Source Security Foundation’s community-driven approach to developing and sharing security metrics, tools and best practices becomes an imperative. Our customers are actively interested in the health of the open source from which their solutions are constructed, and assuring secure development across open the supply chain is vital,” said Paul Miller, CTO, Wind River. “We are looking forward to collaborating more closely with the OpenSSF community. By working together, Wind River can provide customers with a level of open source security assurance that would otherwise be unobtainable.”

About the Linux Foundation

Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,800 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure, including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, Hyperledger, RISC-V, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users, and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/

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The Linux Foundation has registered trademarks and uses trademarks. For a list of trademarks of The Linux Foundation, please see its trademark usage page: www.linuxfoundation.org/trademark-usage. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.

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jennifer@storychangesculture.com

Announcing the OpenSSF Vulnerability Disclosure WG guide to disclosure for OSS projects

By Blog

Authors: Anne Bertucio, Christopher Robinson, David Wheeler, OpenSSF Vulnerability Disclosure WG members

https://github.com/ossf/oss-vulnerability-guide/blob/main/maintainer-guide.md

Vulnerability disclosure is the process of reporting, remediating, and communicating the details of a discovered vulnerability.  This is a critical component of software security both for the software communities that create the code as well as the downstream consumers that ingest and use it. It is so critical in fact, that it was one of the requirements of a recent United States Executive Order on improving software supply chain security. Vulnerability disclosure takes an organized effort on both the software maintainers and security researchers (referred to as “finders”). Within open source projects, this effort typically falls to the project maintainers.

A common saying in the vulnerability disclosure and incident response field is to, “have a plan before you need a plan.” Many open source maintainers have little-to-no familiarity with what a vulnerability disclosure plan should be. Maintainers are experts at creatively solving problems through code, not necessarily at being experts in the area of software security.  While many may have familiarity with secure coding concepts, they have little to no time for creating and drafting a plan for their project. The end result is open source projects without vulnerability disclosure policies, finders without directions on how to report, and users without a clear way to get information on vulnerabilities that may affect them.

Today the OpenSSF is releasing a guide and resources on coordinated vulnerability disclosure (CVD) for open source projects.  This guide was created by the OpenSSF Vulnerability Disclosure Working Group and has been informed by broadly-accepted industry good practices around CVD. The guide takes maintainers through CVD from pre-report preparations to publicly disclosing vulnerabilities, and puts the steps of CVD in the context of open source software development. The guide also includes commonly-needed policy and communication templates, such as a security policy (frequently referred to as a SECURITY.md), embargo notifications, and disclosure announcements. 

The Open Source ecosystem is broad and diverse. While projects may need to modify the resources for their project, the OpenSSF hopes that this encourages project maintainers who are unfamiliar with vulnerability disclosure to learn and adopt CVD for their projects, and simplifies implementation for the disclosure-familiar. These tools and practices can help improve the overall security and awareness of every community that integrates them on whatever level the project can.

This guide borrows the approaches of other open source project disclosure efforts: the Google Guide to CVD for OSS projects, the OpenStack Vulnerability Management Process, and the Kubernetes Security and Disclosure Process. 

This CVD guide is just one of many projects that the Open Source Security Foundation is actively working on to improve security within the OSS ecosystem. The OpenSSF is focused on the incredibly broad spectrum of open source software and seeks to improve the lives of developers, projects, and end-consumers of these fantastic communities.

The guide and resources are available on the OpenSSF GitHub.

Introducing the Allstar GitHub App

By Blog

Authors: Mike Maraya, Jeff Mendoza

We’re excited to announce Allstar, a GitHub app that provides automated continuous enforcement of security best practices for GitHub projects. With Allstar, owners can check for security policy adherence, set desired enforcement actions, and continuously enact those enforcements when triggered by a setting or file change in the organization or project repository. Allstar will help the open source community proactively reduce security risk while adding as little friction as possible.

Allstar is a companion to Security Scorecards, an automated tool that assesses risk to a repository and its dependencies. Security Scorecards checks a number of important heuristics (currently 18), such as whether the project uses branch protection, cryptographically signs release artifacts, or requires code review. From these scores, users can understand specific areas to improve in order to strengthen the security posture of their project. From here, Allstar takes the next step and allows maintainers to opt into automated enforcement of specific checks. If your repository fails a particular check that you enable, Allstar intervenes to make the necessary changes to remediate the issue, avoiding the extra effort of regular manual fixes. In short, Security Scorecards helps you measure your current security posture against where you want to be; Allstar helps you get there.

Continuous Automated Enforcement

Allstar works by continuously checking expected GitHub API states and repository file contents (repository settings, branch settings, workflow settings) against defined security policies and applying enforcement actions (filing issues, changing the settings) when expected states do not match the policies. The continuous nature of the enforcement protects against stealthy attacks that human enforcement might not notice: Allstar will detect and respond to a policy violation if someone, for example, temporarily disables branch protections in order to commit a malicious change before reenabling the protections. 

OpenSSF runs an Allstar instance that anyone can install and use. However, you can create and run your own Allstar instance for security or customization reasons.

User-Defined Enforcement Actions

Allstar lets you pick the enforcement actions that make sense for the organization, the repository, and the specific policies you’ve enabled. The following enforcement actions are available today, with more planned for the future:

  • Log the security policy adherence failure with no additional action
  • Open a GitHub issue
  • Revert the modified GitHub policy setting to match the original Allstar configuration

Security Policy Enforcements Available Today

A limited number of security policy checks are currently enforced by Allstar, with additional policies planned in the coming months. Here’s what’s up and running so far:

Branch Protection

Branch protection sets requirements before a collaborator can push changes to a branch in your repository. Allstar can enforce the following requirements:

  • Require approval on pull requests, which helps meet the code review requirement for Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA)
  • Set a number of required pull request approvals
  • Dismiss stale pull request approvals
  • Block force pushes

Security Policy

A defined policy for responsible vulnerability disclosure helps protect the users of your project, ensuring that you have a chance to remediate an issue before public disclosure. Allstar can enforce the presence of a security policy file (SECURITY.md).

Outside Collaborator Administrators

Allstar can enforce a requirement that users with administrator privileges on a repository be members of the owning organization. It can also disallow push access for outside collaborators. 

Binary Artifacts

Binary artifacts in a repository are threat vectors that cannot be accurately reviewed by a human. Allstar will detect these and alert the user if found.

What’s Next

Here are some of the enforcements we’re looking to build in future releases:

Automatic Dependency Update

Security vulnerabilities are regularly discovered and fixed in open source packages. Automatically updating your dependencies helps keep known vulnerabilities out of your project. Allstar will be able to ensure that automatic dependency updates via Dependabot or Renovate are enabled on your repository.

Frozen Dependencies

Automatic incorporation of new dependency versions without review is an attack vector. A lock file or similar language-specific pinning file can protect against a compromised dependency release making its way into your project. Allstar will be able to detect and enforce the presence of language-specific dependency pinning.

Get Involved

Allstar is still in the early stages of development, so we welcome adoption and community feedback. You can get started using Allstar and help improve it by submitting issues and/or pull requests for new additions. We look forward to rolling out more enforcements; in the meanwhile, taking simple steps like enforcing code review and setting branch protections can make a significant difference in protecting against supply-chain attacks. Taking these fundamental actions together can help raise the bar for security standards in open source software.

How LF communities enable security measures required by the US Executive Order on Cybersecurity

By Blog

Our communities take security seriously and have been instrumental in creating the tools and standards that every organization needs to comply with the recent US Executive Order

Overview

The US White House recently released its Executive Order (EO) on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity (along with a press call) to counter “persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector, the private sector, and ultimately the American people’s security and privacy.”

In this post, we’ll show what the Linux Foundation’s communities have already built that support this EO and note some other ways to assist in the future. But first, let’s put things in context.

The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Security Initiatives In Context

We deeply care about security, including supply chain (SC) security. The Linux Foundation is home to some of the most important and widely-used OSS, including the Linux kernel and Kubernetes. The LF’s previous Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) and its current Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) have been working to secure OSS, both in general and in widely-used components. The OpenSSF, in particular, is a broad industry coalition “collaborating to secure the open source ecosystem.”

The Software Package Data Exchange (SPDX) project has been working for the last ten years to enable software transparency and the exchange of software bill of materials (SBOM) data necessary for security analysis. SPDX, recognized and implemented as ISO/IEC standard 5962:2021, is supported by global companies with massive supply chains, and has a large open and closed source tooling support ecosystem. SPDX already meets the requirements of the executive order for SBOMs.

Finally, several LF foundations have focused on the security of various verticals. For example,  LF Public Health and LF Energy have worked on security in their respective sectors. Our cloud computing industry collaborating within CNCF has also produced a guide for supporting software supply chain best practices for cloud systems and applications.

Given that context, let’s look at some of the EO statements (in the order they are written) and how our communities have invested years in open collaboration to address these challenges.

Best Practices

The EO 4(b) and 4(c) says that

The “Secretary of Commerce [acting through NIST] shall solicit input from the Federal Government, private sector, academia, and other appropriate actors to identify existing or develop new standards, tools, and best practices for complying with the standards, procedures, or criteria [including] criteria that can be used to evaluate software security, include criteria to evaluate the security practices of the developers and suppliers themselves, and identify innovative tools or methods to demonstrate conformance with secure practices [and guidelines] for enhancing software supply chain security.” Later in EO 4(e)(ix) it discusses “attesting to conformity with secure software development practices.”

The OpenSSF’s CII Best Practices badge project specifically identifies best practices for OSS, focusing on security and including criteria to evaluate the security practices of developers and suppliers (it has over 3,800 participating projects). LF is also working with SLSA (currently in development) as potential additional guidance focused on addressing supply chain issues further.

Best practices are only useful if developers understand them, yet most software developers have never received education or training in developing secure software. The LF has developed and released its Secure Software Development Fundamentals set of courses available on edX to anyone at no cost. The OpenSSF Best Practices Working Group (WG) actively works to identify and promulgate best practices. We also provide a number of specific standards, tools, and best practices, as discussed below.

Encryption and Data Confidentiality

The EO 3(d) requires agencies to adopt “encryption for data at rest and in transit.” Encryption in transit is implemented on the web using the TLS (“https://”) protocol, and Let’s Encrypt is the world’s largest certificate authority for TLS certificates.

In addition, the LF Confidential Computing Consortium is dedicated to defining and accelerating the adoption of confidential computing. Confidential computing protects data in use (not just at rest and in transit) by performing computation in a hardware-based Trusted Execution Environment. These secure and isolated environments prevent unauthorized access or modification of applications and data while in use.

Supply Chain Integrity

The EO 4(e)(iii) states a requirement for

 “employing automated tools, or comparable processes, to maintain trusted source code supply chains, thereby ensuring the integrity of the code.” 

The LF has many projects that support SC integrity, in particular:

  • in-toto is a framework specifically designed to secure the integrity of software supply chains.
  • The Update Framework (TUF) helps developers maintain the security of software update systems, and is used in production by various tech companies and open source organizations.  
  • Uptane is a variant of TUF; it’s an open and secure software update system design which protects software delivered over-the-air to the computerized units of automobiles.
  • sigstore is a project to provide a public good / non-profit service to improve the open source software supply chain by easing the adoption of cryptographic software signing (of artifacts such as release files and container images) backed by transparency log technologies (which provide a tamper-resistant public log). 
  • We are also funding focused work on tools to ease signature and verify origins, e.g., we’re working to extend git to enable pluggable support for signatures, and the patatt tool provides an easy way to provide end-to-end cryptographic attestation to patches sent via email.
  • OpenChain (ISO 5230) is the International Standard for open source license compliance. Application of OpenChain requires identification of OSS components. While OpenChain by itself focuses more on licenses, that identification is easily reused to analyze other aspects of those components once they’re identified (for example, to look for known vulnerabilities).

Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs) support supply chain integrity; our SBOM work is so extensive that we’ll discuss that separately.

Software Bill of Materials (SBOMs)

Many cyber risks come from using components with known vulnerabilities. Known vulnerabilities are especially concerning in key infrastructure industries, such as the national fuel pipelines,  telecommunications networks, utilities, and energy grids. The exploitation of those vulnerabilities could lead to interruption of supply lines and service, and in some cases, loss of life due to a cyberattack.

One-time reviews don’t help since these vulnerabilities are typically found after the component has been developed and incorporated. Instead, what is needed is visibility into the components of the software environments that run these key infrastructure systems, similar to how food ingredients are made visible.

A Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) is a nested inventory or a list of ingredients that make up the software components used in creating a device or system. This is especially critical as it relates to a national digital infrastructure used within government agencies and in key industries that present national security risks if penetrated. The use of SBOMs would improve understanding of the operational and cyber risks of those software components from their originating supply chain.

The EO has extensive text about requiring a software bill of materials (SBOM) and tasks that depend on SBOMs:

  • EO 4(e) requires providing a purchaser an SBOM “for each product directly or by publishing it on a public website” and “ensuring and attesting… the integrity and provenance of open source software used within any portion of a product.” 
  • It also requires tasks that typically require SBOMs, e.g., “employing automated tools, or comparable processes, that check for known and potential vulnerabilities and remediate them, which shall operate regularly….” and “maintaining accurate and up-to-date data, provenance (i.e., origin) of software code or components, and controls on internal and third-party software components, tools, and services present in software development processes, and performing audits and enforcement of these controls on a recurring basis.” 
  • EO 4(f) requires publishing “minimum elements for an SBOM,” and EO 10(j) formally defines an SBOM as a “formal record containing the details and supply chain relationships of various components used in building software…  The SBOM enumerates [assembled] components in a product… analogous to a list of ingredients on food packaging.”

The LF has been developing and refining SPDX for over ten years; SPDX is used worldwide and is approved as ISO/IEC International Standard 5962:2021.  SPDX is a file format that identifies the software components within a larger piece of computer software and metadata such as the licenses of those components. SPDX 2.2 already supports the current guidance from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for minimum SBOM elements. Some ecosystems have ecosystem-specific conventions for SBOM information, but SPDX can provide information across all arbitrary ecosystems.

SPDX is real and in use today, with increased adoption expected in the future. For example:

  • An NTIA “plugfest” demonstrated ten different producers generating SPDX. SPDX supports acquiring data from different sources (e.g., source code analysis, executables from producers, and analysis from third parties). 
  • corpus of some LF projects with SPDX source SBOMs is available. 
  • Various LF projects are working to generate binary SBOMs as part of their builds, including yocto and Zephyr
  • To assist with further SPDX adoption, the LF is paying to write SPDX plugins for major package managers.

Vulnerability Disclosure

No matter what, some vulnerabilities will be found later and need to be fixed. EO 4(e)(viii) requires “participating in a vulnerability disclosure program that includes a reporting and disclosure process.” That way, vulnerabilities that are found can be reported to the organizations that can fix them. 

The CII Best Practices badge passing criteria requires that OSS projects specifically identify how to report vulnerabilities to them. More broadly, the OpenSSF Vulnerability Disclosures Working Group is working to help “mature and advocate well-managed vulnerability reporting and communication” for OSS. Most widely-used Linux distributions have a robust security response team, but the Alpine Linux distribution (widely used in container-based systems) did not. The Linux Foundation and Google funded various improvements to Alpine Linux, including a security response team.

We hope that the US will update its Vulnerabilities Equities Process (VEP) to work more cooperatively with commercial organizations, including OSS projects, to share more vulnerability information. Every vulnerability that the US fails to disclose is a vulnerability that can be found and exploited by attackers. We would welcome such discussions.

Critical Software

It’s especially important to focus on critical software — but what is critical software? EO 4(g) requires the executive branch to define “critical software,” and 4(h) requires the executive branch to “identify and make available to agencies a list of categories of software and software products… meeting the definition of critical software.”

Linux Foundation and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH) developed the report Vulnerabilities in the Core,’ a Preliminary Report and Census II of Open Source Software, which analyzed the use of OSS to help identify critical software. The LF and LISH are in the process of updating that report. The CII identified many important projects and assisted them, including OpenSSL (after Heartbleed), OpenSSH,  GnuPG, Frama-C, and the OWASP Zed Attack Proxy (ZAP). The OpenSSF Securing Critical Projects Working Group has been working to better identify critical OSS projects and to focus resources on critical OSS projects that need help. There is already a first-cut list of such projects, along with efforts to fund such aid.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Unfortunately, internet-of-things (IoT) devices often have notoriously bad security. It’s often been said that “the S in IoT stands for security.” 

EO 4(s) initiates a pilot program to “educate the public on the security capabilities of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices and software development practices [based on existing consumer product labeling programs], and shall consider ways to incentivize manufacturers and developers to participate in these programs.” EO 4(t) states that such “IoT cybersecurity criteria” shall “reflect increasingly comprehensive levels of testing and assessment.”

The Linux Foundation develops and is home to many of the key components of IoT systems. These include:

  • The Linux kernel, used by many IoT devices. 
  • The yocto project, which creates custom Linux-based systems for IoT and embedded systems. Yocto supports full reproducible builds. 
  • EdgeX Foundry, which is a flexible OSS framework that facilitates interoperability between devices and applications at the IoT edge, and has been downloaded millions of times. 
  • The Zephyr project, which provides a real-time operating system (RTOS) used by many for resource-constrained IoT devices and is able to generate SBOM’s automatically during build. Zephyr is one of the few open source projects that is a CVE Numbering Authority.
  • The seL4 microkernel, which is the most assured operating system kernel in the world; it’s notable for its comprehensive formal verification.

Security Labeling

EO 4(u) focuses on identifying:

“secure software development practices or criteria for a consumer software labeling program [that reflects] a baseline level of secure practices, and if practicable, shall reflect increasingly comprehensive levels of testing and assessment that a product may have undergone [and] identify, modify, or develop a recommended label or, if practicable, a tiered software security rating system.”

The OpenSSF’s CII Best Practices badge project (noted earlier) specifically identifies best practices for OSS development, and is already tiered (passing, silver, and gold). Over 3,800 projects currently participate.

There are also a number of projects that relate to measuring security and/or broader quality:

Conclusion

The Linux Foundation (LF) has long been working to help improve the security of open source software (OSS), which powers systems worldwide. We couldn’t do this without the many contributions of time, money, and other resources from numerous companies and individuals; we gratefully thank them all.  We are always delighted to work with anyone to improve the development and deployment of open source software, which is important to us all.

David A. Wheeler, Director of Open Source Supply Chain Security at the Linux Foundation

Technology and Enterprise Leaders Combine Efforts to Improve Open Source Security

By Press Release

New collaboration called Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) consolidates industry efforts to improve the security of open source software

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Aug 3, 2020 – The Linux Foundation, today announced the formation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF). The OpenSSF is a cross-industry collaboration that brings together leaders to improve the security of open source software (OSS) by building a broader community with targeted initiatives and best practices. It combines efforts from the Core Infrastructure Initiative, GitHub’s Open Source Security Coalition and other open source security work from founding governing board members GitHub, Google, IBM, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, NCC Group, OWASP Foundation and Red Hat, among others. Additional founding members include ElevenPaths, GitLab, HackerOne, Intel, Okta, Purdue, SAFECode, StackHawk, Trail of Bits, Uber and VMware.

Open source software has become pervasive in data centers, consumer devices and services, representing its value among technologists and businesses alike. Because of its development process, open source that ultimately reaches end users has a chain of contributors and dependencies. It is important that those responsible for their user or organization’s security are able to understand and verify the security of this dependency chain.

The OpenSSF brings together the industry’s most important open source security initiatives and the individuals and companies that support them. The Linux Foundation’s Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII), founded in response to the 2014 Heartbleed bug, and the Open Source Security Coalition, founded by the GitHub Security Lab, are just a couple of the projects that will be brought together under the new OpenSSF. The Foundation’s governance, technical community and its decisions will be transparent, and any specifications and projects developed will be vendor agnostic. The OpenSSF is committed to collaboration and working both upstream and with existing communities to advance open source security for all.

“We believe open source is a public good and across every industry we have a responsibility to come together to improve and support the security of open source software we all depend on,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “Ensuring open source security is one of the most important things we can do, and it requires all of us around the world to assist in the effort. The OpenSSF will provide that forum for a truly collaborative, cross-industry effort.”

With the formalization of the group, the open governance structure is established and includes a Governing Board (GB), a Technical Advisory Council (TAC) and a separate oversight for each working group and project. OpenSSF intends to host a variety of open source technical initiatives to support security for the world’s most critical open source software, all of which will be done in the open on GitHub.

For more information and to contribute to the project, please visit https://openssf.org

Resources

Threats, Risks & Mitigations of the Open Source Ecosystem, Open Source Security Coalition
Vulnerabilities in the Core, Harvard’s Lab for Innovation Science and Linux Foundation
Red Hat Product Security Risk Report, Red Hat

Governing Board Member Quotes

GitHub
“Every industry is using open source software, and it is our collective responsibility to help maintain a healthy and secure ecosystem,” said Jamie Cool, Vice President of Product Management, Security at GitHub. “GitHub founded the Open Source Security Coalition in 2019 to bring together industry leaders around this mission and ensure the consumption of open source software is something that all developers can do with confidence. We look forward to this next step in the evolution of the coalition and serving as a founding member of the Open Source Security Foundation.”

Read more in GitHub’s blog.

Google
“Security is always top of mind for Google and our users. We have developed robust internal security tools and systems for consuming open source software internally, for our users, and for our OSS-based products. We believe in building safer products for everyone with far-reaching impacts, and we are excited to work with the broader community through the OpenSSF. We look forward to sharing our innovations and working together to improve the security of open source software we all depend on,” said Director of Product Security, Google Cloud, James Higgins.

IBM
“Open source has become mainstream in the enterprise. As such, the security of the open source supply-chain is of paramount importance to IBM and our clients,” said Christopher Ferris, IBM Fellow and CTO Open Technology. “The launch of the Open Source Security Foundation marks an important step towards giving open source communities the information and tools they need to improve their secure engineering practices, and the information developers need to choose their open source wisely.”

JPMorgan Chase
“Developing, growing and using open source software is a top priority for JPMorgan Chase. We are committed to partner with the community through the Open Source Security Foundation to ensure trust and security in open source software for everyone,” stated Lori Beer, Global Chief Information Officer, JPMorgan Chase.

Microsoft
“As open source is now core to nearly every company’s technology strategy, securing open source software is an essential part of securing the supply chain for every company, including our own,” said Mark Russinovich, Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft Azure. “As with everything open source, building better security is a community-driven process. All of us at Microsoft are excited to be a founding member of the Open Source Security Foundation and we look forward to partnering with the community to create new security solutions that will help us all.”

Read more in Microsoft’s blog.

NCC Group
“The security and privacy of the internet is essential for the protection of individuals, organizations and critical infrastructure, and also the future of democracy and our civil liberties. Given the fundamental role open source plays in powering our world, creating scalable resources and tools to help software maintainers, developers, and users understand and improve their projects’ security is a significant step toward a safer and more secure world. By bringing together a dedicated group of technologists with a shared desire to improve the security of open source software, together we can begin to remediate – or even prevent – security vulnerabilities at a scale not previously possible,” stated Jennifer Fernick, Head of Research at global cyber security expert NCC Group.”

OWASP
“Joining the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation is central to our mission to advance the state of application security, especially as OpenSSF is already aligned with OWASP’s core philosophies of openness, transparency and innovation,” said Andrew van der Stock, Executive Director of OWASP, the Open Web Application Security Project. “We look forward to working with all of the participating organizations to improve the state of software security and work together on projects of vital interest to software developers, organizations, and governments around the world.”

Red Hat
“Red Hat is unrelenting in our commitment to open source and in participating to make upstream projects successful. We believe security is an essential part of healthy project communities,” said Chris Wright, CTO of Red Hat. “Now, more than ever, is the time for us to join together with other leaders to help ensure key projects are secure and consumable in our products, across enterprises, and as part of the hybrid cloud. We are excited to help found this Open Source Software Foundation.”

Additional Founding Member Quotes

ElevenPaths
“The security of an enterprise application or services depends mainly on the security of all its components. The vast majority of business applications and services are not fully developed in-house as they make use of open source components that help accelerate the development cycle and extend their functionality. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that all open source components comply with the best practices of secure development and periodic reviews are carried out to positively impact all software that makes use of these components. Joining the Open Source Security Foundation is fully aligned with our vision and principles.”

GitLab
“GitLab is excited to play a part in the creation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) to further cross-industry collaboration and move the security of open source projects forward as it is key to the future of technology,” said David DeSanto, director of product for Secure and Defend at GitLab. “Aligning with GitLab’s mission of ‘everyone can contribute,’ we look forward to supporting and contributing to the community to bring together security-conscious developers to change open source development in a collaborative and fundamental way.”

HackerOne
“Open source software powers HackerOne,” said Reed Loden, Head of Open Source Security, HackerOne. “It powers our software, our infrastructure, and our model for engaging with our community. As part of our mission to make the internet safer, we want to make it easier for open source projects to remain secure. For over three years, we’ve given the open source community our platform for free, and we’ve been long-time supporters of initiatives like Internet Bug Bounty. Joining the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation allows us to continue on our mission and make the internet safer alongside some of the foremost visionaries in security. We look forward to seeing the change we can make together.”

Intel
“It takes the industry working together to advance technology and accelerate open source security initiatives. Hardware and software are inextricably linked to deliver security, transparency and trust in open source software. Together with the OpenSSF, Intel will continue to play a key role in mobilizing the industry at large and solving security challenges from the cloud to the edge,” said Anand Pashupathy, GM of System Security Software, Intel.

SAFECode
“Open source software is a major component in today’s software supply chain and thus comprises a significant fraction of the software that individuals and organizations rely upon. Supporting the secure development of open source software is of critical importance to SAFECode members and the software community,” said Steve Lipner, executive director of SAFECode. “We are looking forward to bringing our software security experience to bear as we participate in the Open Source Security Foundation’s mission to build a collaborative, cross-industry community to support the security of open source software.”

StackHawk
“The use of open source has undoubtedly reached critical mass, with ever increasing dependency trees and software complexity. Equipping engineering teams to deliver secure applications simply and scalably is core to our mission at StackHawk. We are excited to be one of the founding members of the Open Source Security Foundation to ensure that this can be a reality across software development as a whole and look forward to continued partnership with the community,” said StackHawk’s Founder & CEO, Joni Klippert.

Uber
“Security and Privacy is always top of mind at Uber to ensure we are responsible stewards of our user’s data. We’re always focused on mitigating all types of software vulnerabilities and as such the security of open source software is a top priority. Historically, we’ve worked with other industry leaders to help build a strong security community around open source software and we are excited to expand those efforts with the OpenSSF,” said Rob Fletcher, Sr Manager, Security Engineering.

VMware
“Strengthening the security posture, policies, and processes in the open source community and in widely used open source projects is strengthening the whole software ecosystem – for all players,” said Joshua Lock, security tech lead, Open Source Technology Center, VMware. “VMware strongly supports the goal of making our software ecosystem more resilient and more secure.”

About the Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation’s projects are critical to the world’s infrastructure including Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js, and more.  The Linux Foundation’s methodology focuses on leveraging best practices and addressing the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org.

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