GNU C Library as its own CNA?

[Siddhesh Poyarekar]

Hello folks,

We have, for many years, been using distribution security teams to help 
with CVE triage and assignment.  It has worked for the most part, but 
it's not uncommon to have CVEs assigned by organizations that don't 
always have a proper understanding of the security impact of bugs in 
glibc despite us having a clearly documented Security Process[1]; a 
recent example is CVE-2023-0687[2], which we had to jump through many 
hoops just to get it disputed and get the record straight on the bug.

If the GNU C Library had it's own CNA, all vulnerabilities reported 
against CVE would have to come to this CNA for triage, thus making sure 
that security issues in glibc get correctly assessed.  As root CNA, Red 
Hat is open to sponsoring FOSS organizations[3] that are willing to have 
their own CNA, subject to certain conditions (all organizational) being 
met.  Is this something that would interest the community?

I am volunteering to take primary responsibility in helping set things 
up, including coordination with the CTI (for whatever additional 
infrastructure this would need), coordination with Red Hat and helping 
build consensus on what the organizational structure should look like.

At the outset, we'll need to have broad agreement on the following:

1. How should users submit issues?  We would need an independent, 
private mailing list, possibly one that can also do PGP for users to 
report security issues.

2. Identify a group of people who ought to be on that list.  A starting 
group could be a cross section of named maintainers from various 
distributions and FSF stewards but we probably need a way to make sure 
that the group is inclusive without being too broad.

3. A formal representation to the root CNA, i.e. Red Hat.  We would need 
a group of volunteers that would be willing to step in as signees for 
this.  I'm in, but I can't do it alone and would need more volunteers; 
it could perhaps be the same set of people who would be part of the 
initial security team in (2).

Thanks,
Sid

[1] https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Security%20Process
[2] https://vuldb.com/?id.220246
[3] https://access.redhat.com/articles/red_hat_cve_program