Reporting a security bug in a Bytecode Alliance project

Security is a top priority for the Bytecode Alliance. As such, we take all reports of suspected security vulnerabilities seriously, and have a number of ways to report them.

For suspected vulnerabilities in a specific project, prefer to report the issue using GitHub’s private vulnerability reporting facilities. Maintainers will then work with you to resolve the issue.

If you think that that channel isn’t right for reporting your specific issue, you can also send email to security@bytecodealliance.org. This list is delivered to a small security team. We will then acknowledge receipt of your report and prioritize initial analysis of severity.

The security team may work in private with individuals from Bytecode Alliance member organizations, core contributors to the affected project(s), and, where applicable, affected downstream projects and products, regardless of their Bytecode Alliance affiliation.

After the initial reply to your report, the security team will endeavor to keep you informed of the progress being made towards a fix and full announcement, and may ask for additional information or guidance surrounding the reported issue.

If you have not received a reply to your report within two days, please reach out on our Zulip instance by posting a message in the #general stream.

Note that the #general stream is public, so please don’t discuss details of your issue there. Instead, simply say that you’re trying to get a hold of someone from the security team.

Preferences

  • Please provide detailed reports with reproducible steps and a clearly defined impact.
  • Submit one vulnerability per report.
  • Social engineering (e.g. phishing, vishing, smishing) is prohibited.

Disclosure Policy

Here is the security disclosure policy for Bytecode Alliance projects.

  • The security report is received and is assigned a primary handler. This person will coordinate the fix and release process. The problem is confirmed and a list of all affected versions is determined. Code is audited to find any potential similar problems. Fixes are prepared for all releases which are still under maintenance. These fixes are not committed to the public repository but rather held locally pending the announcement.

  • A suggested embargo date for this vulnerability is chosen and a CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE®)) is requested for the vulnerability.

  • A prenotification may be published on the security announcements mailing list, providing information about affected projects, severity, and the embargo date.

  • On the embargo date, the Bytecode Alliance security mailing list is sent a copy of the announcement. The changes are pushed to the public repository and new builds are deployed.

  • Typically the embargo date will be set 72 hours from the time the CVE is issued. However, this may vary depending on the severity of the bug or difficulty in applying a fix.

  • This process can take some time, especially when coordination is required with maintainers of other projects. Every effort will be made to handle the bug in as timely a manner as possible; however, it’s important that we follow the release process above to ensure that the disclosure is handled in a consistent manner.

  • Project maintainers are encouraged to write a post-mortem for the Bytecode Alliance blog, detailing the vulnerability and steps being taken to identify and prevent similar vulnerabilities in the future.

Receiving Security Updates

Security notifications will be distributed via the following methods.