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+Embargoed hardware issues
+=========================
+
+Scope
+-----
+
+Hardware issues which result in security problems are a different category
+of security bugs than pure software bugs which  only affect the Linux
+kernel.
+
+Hardware issues like Meltdown, Spectre, L1TF etc. must be treated
+differently because they usually affect all Operating Systems ("OS") and
+therefore need coordination across different OS vendors, distributions,
+hardware vendors and other parties. For some of the issues, software
+mitigations can depend on microcode or firmware updates, which need further
+coordination.
+
+.. _Contact:
+
+Contact
+-------
+
+The Linux kernel hardware security team is separate from the regular Linux
+kernel security team.
+
+The team only handles the coordination of embargoed hardware security
+issues.  Reports of pure software security bugs in the Linux kernel are not
+handled by this team and the reporter will be guided to contact the regular
+Linux kernel security team (:ref:`Documentation/admin-guide/
+<securitybugs>`) instead.
+
+The team can be contacted by email at <hardware-security@kernel.org>. This
+is a private list of security officers who will help you to coordinate an
+issue according to our documented process.
+
+The list is encrypted and email to the list can be sent by either PGP or
+S/MIME encrypted and must be signed with the reporter's PGP key or S/MIME
+certificate. The list's PGP key and S/MIME certificate are available from
+https://www.kernel.org/....
+
+While hardware security issues are often handled by the affected hardware
+vendor, we welcome contact from researchers or individuals who have
+identified a potential hardware flaw.
+
+Hardware security officers
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+The current team of hardware security officers:
+
+  - Linus Torvalds (Linux Foundation Fellow)
+  - Greg Kroah-Hartman (Linux Foundation Fellow)
+  - Thomas Gleixner (Linux Foundation Fellow)
+
+Operation of mailing-lists
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+The encrypted mailing-lists which are used in our process are hosted on
+Linux Foundation's IT infrastructure. By providing this service Linux
+Foundation's director of IT Infrastructure security technically has the
+ability to access the embargoed information, but is obliged to
+confidentiality by his employment contract. Linux Foundation's director of
+IT Infrastructure security is also responsible for the kernel.org
+infrastructure.
+
+The Linux Foundation's current director of IT Infrastructure security is
+Konstantin Ryabitsev.
+
+
+Non-disclosure agreements
+-------------------------
+
+The Linux kernel hardware security team is not a formal body and therefore
+unable to enter into any non-disclosure agreements.  The kernel community
+is aware of the sensitive nature of such issues and offers a Memorandum of
+Understanding instead.
+
+
+Memorandum of Understanding
+---------------------------
+
+The Linux kernel community has a deep understanding of the requirement to
+keep hardware security issues under embargo for coordination between
+different OS vendors, distributors, hardware vendors and other parties.
+
+The Linux kernel community has successfully handled hardware security
+issues in the past and has the necessary mechanisms in place to allow
+community compliant development under embargo restrictions.
+
+The Linux kernel community has a dedicated hardware security team for
+initial contact, which oversees the process of handling such issues under
+embargo rules.
+
+The hardware security team identifies the developers (domain experts) who
+will form the initial response team for a particular issue. The initial
+response team can bring in further developers (domain experts) to address
+the issue in the best technical way.
+
+All involved developers pledge to adhere to the embargo rules and to keep
+the received information confidential. Violation of the pledge will lead to
+immediate exclusion from the current issue and removal from all related
+mailing-lists. In addition, the hardware security team will also exclude
+the offender from future issues. The impact of this consequence is a highly
+effective deterrent in our community. In case a violation happens the
+hardware security team will inform the involved parties immediately. If you
+or anyone becomes aware of a potential violation, please report it
+immediately to the Hardware security officers.
+
+
+Process
+^^^^^^^
+
+Due to the globally distributed nature of Linux kernel development,
+face-to-face meetings are almost impossible to address hardware security
+issues.  Phone conferences are hard to coordinate due to time zones and
+other factors and should be only used when absolutely necessary. Encrypted
+email has been proven to be the most effective and secure communication
+method for these types of issues.
+
+Start of Disclosure
+"""""""""""""""""""
+
+Disclosure starts by contacting the Linux kernel hardware security team by
+email. This initial contact should contain a description of the problem and
+a list of any known affected hardware. If your organization builds or
+distributes the affected hardware, we encourage you to also consider what
+other hardware could be affected.
+
+The hardware security team will provide an incident-specific encrypted
+mailing-list which will be used for initial discussion with the reporter,
+further disclosure and coordination.
+
+The hardware security team will provide the disclosing party a list of
+developers (domain experts) who should be informed initially about the
+issue after confirming with the developers  that they will adhere to this
+Memorandum of Understanding and the documented process. These developers
+form the initial response team and will be responsible for handling the
+issue after initial contact. The hardware security team is supporting the
+response team, but is not necessarily involved in the mitigation
+development process.
+
+While individual developers might be covered by a non-disclosure agreement
+via their employer, they cannot enter individual non-disclosure agreements
+in their role as Linux kernel developers. They will, however, agree to
+adhere to this documented process and the Memorandum of Understanding.
+
+
+Disclosure
+""""""""""
+
+The disclosing party provides detailed information to the initial response
+team via the specific encrypted mailing-list.
+
+From our experience the technical documentation of these issues is usually
+a sufficient starting point and further technical clarification is best
+done via email.
+
+Mitigation development
+""""""""""""""""""""""
+
+The initial response team sets up an encrypted mailing-list or repurposes
+an existing one if appropriate. The disclosing party should provide a list
+of contacts for all other parties who have already been, or should be
+informed about the issue. The response team contacts these parties so they
+can name experts who should be subscribed to the mailing-list.
+
+Using a mailing-list is close to the normal Linux development process and
+has been successfully used in developing mitigations for various hardware
+security issues in the past.
+
+The mailing-list operates in the same way as normal Linux development.
+Patches are posted, discussed and reviewed and if agreed on applied to a
+non-public git repository which is only accessible to the participating
+developers via a secure connection. The repository contains the main
+development branch against the mainline kernel and backport branches for
+stable kernel versions as necessary.
+
+The initial response team will identify further experts from the Linux
+kernel developer community as needed and inform the disclosing party about
+their participation. Bringing in experts can happen at any time of the
+development process and often needs to be handled in a timely manner.
+
+Coordinated release
+"""""""""""""""""""
+
+The involved parties will negotiate the date and time where the embargo
+ends. At that point the prepared mitigations are integrated into the
+relevant kernel trees and published.
+
+While we understand that hardware security issues need coordinated embargo
+time, the embargo time should be constrained to the minimum time which is
+required for all involved parties to develop, test and prepare the
+mitigations. Extending embargo time artificially to meet conference talk
+dates or other non-technical reasons is creating more work and burden for
+the involved developers and response teams as the patches need to be kept
+up to date in order to follow the ongoing upstream kernel development,
+which might create conflicting changes.
+
+CVE assignment
+""""""""""""""
+
+Neither the hardware security team nor the initial response team assign
+CVEs, nor are CVEs required for the development process. If CVEs are
+provided by the disclosing party they can be used for documentation
+purposes.
+
+Process ambassadors
+-------------------
+
+For assistance with this process we have established ambassadors in various
+organizations, who can answer questions about or provide guidance on the
+reporting process and further handling. Ambassadors are not involved in the
+disclosure of a particular issue, unless requested by a response team or by
+an involved disclosed party. The current ambassadors list:
+
+  ============= ========================================================
+  ARM
+  AMD
+  IBM
+  Intel
+  Qualcomm
+
+  Microsoft
+  VMware
+  XEN
+
+  Canonical	Tyler Hicks <tyhicks@canonical.com>
+  Debian	Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
+  Oracle	Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
+  Red Hat	Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
+  SUSE		Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
+
+  Amazon
+  Google
+  ============== ========================================================
+
+If you want your organization to be added to the ambassadors list, please
+contact the hardware security team. The nominated ambassador has to
+understand and support our process fully and is ideally well connected in
+the Linux kernel community.
+
+Encrypted mailing-lists
+-----------------------
+
+We use encrypted mailing-lists for communication. The operating principle
+of these lists is that email sent to the list is encrypted either with the
+list's PGP key or with the list's S/MIME certificate. The mailing-list
+software decrypts the email and re-encrypts it individually for each
+subscriber with the subscriber's PGP key or S/MIME certificate. Details
+about the mailing-list software and the setup which is used to ensure the
+security of the lists and protection of the data can be found here:
+https://www.kernel.org/....
+
+List keys
+^^^^^^^^^
+
+For initial contact see :ref:`Contact`. For incident specific mailing-lists
+the key and S/MIME certificate are conveyed to the subscribers by email
+sent from the specific list.
+
+Subscription to incident specific lists
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Subscription is handled by the response teams. Disclosed parties who want
+to participate in the communication send a list of potential subscribers to
+the response team so the response team can validate subscription requests.
+
+Each subscriber needs to send a subscription request to the response team
+by email. The email must be signed with the subscriber's PGP key or S/MIME
+certificate. If a PGP key is used, it must be available from a public key
+server and is ideally connected to the Linux kernel's PGP web of trust. See
+also: https://www.kernel.org/signature.html.
+
+The response team verifies that the subscriber request is valid and adds
+the subscriber to the list. After subscription the subscriber will receive
+email from the mailing-list which is signed either with the list's PGP key
+or the list's S/MIME certificate. The subscriber's email client can extract
+the PGP key or the S/MIME certificate from the signature so the subscriber
+can send encrypted email to the list.
+