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<tt>Don't get me wrong. Nobody talking here about stupidity.<br>
All what I meant is all developers in the community would like to have
at least a clue about what security issues are discovered.<br>
And deal with them on temporary basis on they own sites until final
solution will be published.<br>
I'm not talking about detail explanation of what and how reported
security issue can harm Drupal site. But may be some clue in order to
deal with it.<br>
Or may be we need some special procedure to subscribe to such
information.<br>
But I'm sure that many of us would like to know what is going on with
fresh security discoveries.<br>
<br>
<br>
Victor Kane wrote:</tt>
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cite="mid:ff176450810010059x58744a62nd80989c15b39a400@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<pre wrap=""><tt>On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 12:40 AM, Drupal Developer <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:lapurd@gmail.com"><lapurd@gmail.com></a> wrote:
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<pre wrap=""><tt>Wow, I would like everybody to notice something right here.
In the message I reply to, Matt Farina said:
"The security team handles things in a tight way. When something is reported
it's not opened up to the world. If the issue is valid it's handled behind
closed doors until a fix and advisory is sent out." /end of citation/
I thought that Drupal is an open community of open source developers working
under GPL license.
Does it mean that ALL issues have to be openly reported to all community for
everybody to review?
Don't you all think that handling security issues behind closed doors until
a fix and advisory will be sent out is sound more like corporate way of
thinking on a way to develop something proprietary?
</tt></pre>
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<pre wrap=""><!----><tt>
It's a GPL license, that's why I am sure the security team is open to
anyone who is interested in helping out on that very important front.
But GPL doesn't mean that we have to be stupid as a community, and
advertise exploits before a fix can be made and people given a chance
to have a security fix to use.
Just as the corporate world, as we are finding out all over the world
these days, certainly has no "monopoly over intelligence", or over
doing what's best for all, open source communities can be smart too.
There's nothing proprietary about that. Quite the opposite, in fact:
defending ourselves against conspiracies to wreak havoc certainly has
to be the right of open source communities,
Victor Kane
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://awebfactory.com.ar">http://awebfactory.com.ar</a>
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<pre wrap=""><tt>I'm very concern about that and invite everybody to collaborate on this one.
Does Matt represent a real situation at this matter in Drupal development
community?
If not, then I'm sure that many people would like to know exactly what the
process is for handling security issues from the moment they have been
reported?
Thanks in advance,
Alex
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:matt@mattfarina.com">matt@mattfarina.com</a> wrote:
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<pre wrap=""><tt>Jon,
Thanks for your interest in this. I'm interested in this as well.
Some of their concerns seem to be over some misconceptions that might help
to be cleared up.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but drupal 4.0 was 10 major releases ago.
100 + advisories over 10 major releases isn't as many as the 3 which the
numbering might look like. Before drupal 5 the major releases were point
releases and not full number releases. On top of that, the security
advisories cover contributed modules and have included other libraries used
by drupal modules, such as getID3.
The security team handles things in a tight way. When something is
reported it's not opened up to the world. If the issue is valid it's handled
behind closed doors until a fix and advisory is sent out. Those advisories
come out on Wednesdays so they can immediately be acted on.
I would be very curious as to what it would take to certification as well
as their concerns.
Matt
Quoting Jon Saints <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:saintsjd@gmail.com"><saintsjd@gmail.com></a>:
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<pre wrap=""><tt>On a recent project for the US government, half way through the
development
process, our work was stopped by a government security review which said
that Drupal (and open source software in general) is not suitable for use
in
government projects that house personal information due to security
concerns.
Because our project had been approved by higher ups within the
department,
we were paid for our work up to that point and asked to stop. Now, its
up
to the tax payers to foot a much larger bill for other developers to
implement a proprietary and more "secure" (or secretive) solution.
The "transparency" of the Drupal project was one of the government's big
objections. In their eyes, disclosing and fixing securit holes in a
timely
manner, is not the same thing as security. They pointed out the 100+
security disclosures since drupal 4.0 as a reason that the system could
not
be used. We noted that all these disclosures where quickly addressed,
but
that did not seem to matter.
I notice other governments around the world are using Drupal with great
success and savings to citizens:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://buytaert.net/new-zealand-government-using-drupal">http://buytaert.net/new-zealand-government-using-drupal</a>
The standards we would need to meet with drupal are:
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SMA/fisma/index.html">http://csrc.nist.gov/groups/SMA/fisma/index.html</a>
My questions are the following:
- Have any other developers run into this cerfication problem before?
- Is anyone in the drupal community currently working to get Drupal
certified for use in US Government projects?
- Does anyone know exactly what cerfication would require from a
development standpoint?
If there is interest in investigating this type of certification further,
let me know. NIST, the department that certifies software, is just down
the
road from me. I could go investigate further.
Thanks
Jon
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