Documentation/process: Embargoed hardware security issues

To address the requirements of embargoed hardware issues, like Meltdown,
Spectre, L1TF etc. it is necessary to define and document a process for
handling embargoed hardware security issues.

Following the discussion at the maintainer summit 2018 in Edinburgh
(https://lwn.net/Articles/769417/) the volunteered people have worked
out a process and a Memorandum of Understanding.  The latter addresses
the fact that the Linux kernel community cannot sign NDAs for various
reasons.

The initial contact point for hardware security issues is different from
the regular kernel security contact to provide a known and neutral
interface for hardware vendors and researchers. The initial primary
contact team is proposed to be staffed by Linux Foundation Fellows, who
are not associated to a vendor or a distribution and are well connected
in the industry as a whole.

The process is designed with the experience of the past incidents in
mind and tries to address the remaining gaps, so future (hopefully rare)
incidents can be handled more efficiently.  It won't remove the fact,
that most of this has to be done behind closed doors, but it is set up
to avoid big bureaucratic hurdles for individual developers.

The process is solely for handling hardware security issues and cannot
be used for regular kernel (software only) security bugs.

This memo can help with hardware companies who, and I quote, "[my
manager] doesn't want to bet his job on the list keeping things secret."
This despite numerous leaks directly from that company over the years,
and none ever so far from the kernel security team.  Cognitive
dissidence seems to be a requirement to be a good manager.

To accelerate the adoption of this  process, we introduce the concept of
ambassadors in participating companies. The ambassadors are there to
guide people to comply with the process, but are not automatically
involved in the disclosure of a particular incident.

Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Laura Abbott <labbott@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
Reviewed-by: Tyler Hicks <tyhicks@canonical.com>
Reviewed-by: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20190815212505.GC12041@kroah.com
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/process/index.rst b/Documentation/process/index.rst
index 878ebfda7eef..e2c9ffc682c5 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/index.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/index.rst
@@ -45,6 +45,7 @@ Other guides to the community that are of interest to most developers are:
    submit-checklist
    kernel-docs
    deprecated
+   embargoed-hardware-issues
 
 These are some overall technical guides that have been put here for now for
 lack of a better place.