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I don't disagree with your or joepie91_'s points in that many (maybe most) open source project maintainers are perhaps more guarded and difficult in accepting c

I don't disagree with your or joepie91_'s points in that many (maybe most) open source project maintainers are perhaps more guarded and difficult in accepting contributions than they should be. That said, even if you submit a pull request or an issue ticket and the maintainer doesn't follow up, or is making the issue unnecessarily complicated to resolve formally and merge into the main branch, at least the record of your findings is there attached to the repo as a rejected pull request or a closed issue ticket, and that can help someone who comes along after the fact who maybe experienced the same issue you did and can benefit from your comments. Maybe that same person who comes along later will have the time to fight for having the changes merged, and can use your comments as further evidence that the issue is worth reconsidering. I stand by the idea that finding the issue, but posting it on an unrelated forum (like HN) instead of attaching it to the project itself serves no purpose than to tell others who are probably not even users of the open source code "look at this problem I found/solved, aren't I great?"

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
In this case: I did, and it was immediately closed without any change to the code, documentation, process, or culture.
- iamatworknow 10y ago
  I'd say you did your due diligence then.
- Alupis 10y ago
  > In this case: I did, and it was immediately closed without any change to the code, documentation, process, or culture. You left out the part where they told you this perceived issue did not impact their codebase, due to how they were using the upstream project you cited.[1] > While this is an issue it does not affect us as we aren't using session cookies with slim You then started to rant about how they don't update their dependencies "quick enough". [1] https://github.com/samilliken/openDCIM/issues/837 https://github.com/samilliken/openDCIM/issues/837
  - joepie91_ 10y ago
    > You left out the part where they told you this perceived issue did not impact their codebase, due to how they were using the upstream project you cited. This is completely irrelevant. Vulnerable dependencies are vulnerable dependencies, and trying to avoid updates because you're "not affected" is a really good way to get owned. This is for the exact same reason that "yes, there's an XSS vulnerability in the admin panel, but that doesn't matter because it requires an admin login" is invalid. At some point, somebody is going to combine multiple "unexploitable" vulnerabilities or exploitation paths that you overlooked, and successfully compromise your system. A vulnerable dependency means that you need to update that dependency, full stop. No exceptions.
    - Alupis 10y ago
      Whether it's relevant or not is up for the project maintainer to decide. All anyone can do is point out what they perceive as a potential problem, and then let the others take it from there. CiPHPerCoder didn't exactly do that. He came out guns ablaze from the start, using bolded text, italics and inflammatory phrasing - basically just stopping short of calling the project maintainer a complete idiot. It's not surprising CiPHPerCoder got the reaction he did - it is, however, surprising he decided to do all this under his company's name. It's almost like CiPHPerCoder is personally offended that some joe random developer hasn't heard about some obscure CVE CiPHPerCoder was involved with, or that they didn't handle it like he would like. "Do you know who I am!?" The initial issue was he came here and ranted about it, instead of pointing it out to the projects. Eventually he "gave in" and reported it to a single project, but took this holier-than-thou tone and was aggressive the entire time. That's ridiculous.
      - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
        > It's almost like CiPHPerCoder is personally offended that some joe random developer hasn't heard about some obscure CVE CiPHPerCoder was involved with, or that they didn't handle it like he would like. "Do you know who I am!?" Except this isn't "some joe random developer", this is software created by and for the US government, which is featured on code.gov. I'd expect them to take security seriously and apply all upstream security patches immediately, not sit on them for years after they've been resolved. Anything but that is sheer negligence. What else hasn't been updated which contains vulnerabilities that do affect them? > The initial issue was he came here and ranted about it, instead of pointing it out to the projects. That's what joepie91 was trying to explain to you. > Eventually he "gave in" and reported it to a single project, but took this holier-than-thou tone and was aggressive the entire time. That's ridiculous. Would you rather I do that or not report it to them at all? Choose only one. If I'm going to do it, I'm not going to do it your way. You can if you want. Personally, I'd rather not report bugs at all. Until you've reported vulnerabilities to two or three dozen different projects, this might not mean much, but: It burns you out to keep reporting the same flaws to different projects. Having developers respond to security risks with an air of entitlement just turns up the heat on the burn-out engine. The first response to my comment here was You should send in a pull request, or file a bug report in the repo. Pay attention to the order of operations here. The "should" is immediately associated with a large amount of unpaid work, with an alternative that would also be a large amount of unpaid work disguised as a hypothetically smaller amount of effort. But as others have stated: It's not. > It's not surprising CiPHPerCoder got the reaction he did - it is, however, surprising he decided to do all this under his company's name. Even if I had remembered to switch Github accounts, people would still associate it with my employer anyway. Kind of a moot point, really. I gave you what you asked for. Next time, maybe don't tell people what they should do? It's rude to bark orders like that, and it won't get the result you want.
joepie91_ 10y ago
> That said, even if you submit a pull request or an issue ticket and the maintainer doesn't follow up, or is making the issue unnecessarily complicated to resolve formally and merge into the main branch, at least the record of your findings is there attached to the repo as a rejected pull request or a closed issue ticket, and that can help someone who comes along after the fact who maybe experienced the same issue you did and can benefit from your comments. Maybe that same person who comes along later will have the time to fight for having the changes merged, and can use your comments as further evidence that the issue is worth reconsidering. In my experience, this is a continuous source of frustration and anxiety. Not responding doesn't stop the notifications, and on top of that it also makes the contributor look bad by ignoring follow-ups. It's much easier and less frustrating to just not file anything in the first place. > I stand by the idea that finding the issue, but posting it on an unrelated forum (like HN) instead of attaching it to the project itself serves no purpose than to tell others who are probably not even users of the open source code "look at this problem I found/solved, aren't I great?" This is just flat-out bullshit, and frankly says more about you and your assumptions than about CiPHPer (who, for the record, is somebody I know personally). Have you considered that maybe CiPHPer is just tired of arguing with vendors and getting nowhere, and has now resorted to just publicizing their fuckups in the hope that maybe that will change something? To be clear: nobody owes any vendor anything. While I personally at least attempt to disclose a vulnerability privately before going public, there is absolutely no requirement to do this. It is first and foremost the vendor's responsibility to keep their software and its dependencies up-to-date, not that of the public. Be happy that it's being reported at all, rather than just quietly sold on the black market. The reality is that vendors have been grossly negligent of security for the past several decades, and still continue to do so, using all kinds of shit excuses about how much time and money it costs to fix something they shouldn't have fucked up in the first place. Don't be surprised when security researchers get tired of that shit, and just start dumping vulnerabilities publicly when there are indications that the vendor is negligent (like is the case here). Again: the change here is to come from the vendors, not from the security researchers.

CiPHPerCoder 10y ago

In this case: I did, and it was immediately closed without any change to the code, documentation, process, or culture.

iamatworknow 10y ago
I'd say you did your due diligence then.
Alupis 10y ago
> In this case: I did, and it was immediately closed without any change to the code, documentation, process, or culture. You left out the part where they told you this perceived issue did not impact their codebase, due to how they were using the upstream project you cited.[1] > While this is an issue it does not affect us as we aren't using session cookies with slim You then started to rant about how they don't update their dependencies "quick enough". [1] https://github.com/samilliken/openDCIM/issues/837 https://github.com/samilliken/openDCIM/issues/837
- joepie91_ 10y ago
  > You left out the part where they told you this perceived issue did not impact their codebase, due to how they were using the upstream project you cited. This is completely irrelevant. Vulnerable dependencies are vulnerable dependencies, and trying to avoid updates because you're "not affected" is a really good way to get owned. This is for the exact same reason that "yes, there's an XSS vulnerability in the admin panel, but that doesn't matter because it requires an admin login" is invalid. At some point, somebody is going to combine multiple "unexploitable" vulnerabilities or exploitation paths that you overlooked, and successfully compromise your system. A vulnerable dependency means that you need to update that dependency, full stop. No exceptions.
  - Alupis 10y ago
    Whether it's relevant or not is up for the project maintainer to decide. All anyone can do is point out what they perceive as a potential problem, and then let the others take it from there. CiPHPerCoder didn't exactly do that. He came out guns ablaze from the start, using bolded text, italics and inflammatory phrasing - basically just stopping short of calling the project maintainer a complete idiot. It's not surprising CiPHPerCoder got the reaction he did - it is, however, surprising he decided to do all this under his company's name. It's almost like CiPHPerCoder is personally offended that some joe random developer hasn't heard about some obscure CVE CiPHPerCoder was involved with, or that they didn't handle it like he would like. "Do you know who I am!?" The initial issue was he came here and ranted about it, instead of pointing it out to the projects. Eventually he "gave in" and reported it to a single project, but took this holier-than-thou tone and was aggressive the entire time. That's ridiculous.
    - CiPHPerCoder 10y ago
      > It's almost like CiPHPerCoder is personally offended that some joe random developer hasn't heard about some obscure CVE CiPHPerCoder was involved with, or that they didn't handle it like he would like. "Do you know who I am!?" Except this isn't "some joe random developer", this is software created by and for the US government, which is featured on code.gov. I'd expect them to take security seriously and apply all upstream security patches immediately, not sit on them for years after they've been resolved. Anything but that is sheer negligence. What else hasn't been updated which contains vulnerabilities that do affect them? > The initial issue was he came here and ranted about it, instead of pointing it out to the projects. That's what joepie91 was trying to explain to you. > Eventually he "gave in" and reported it to a single project, but took this holier-than-thou tone and was aggressive the entire time. That's ridiculous. Would you rather I do that or not report it to them at all? Choose only one. If I'm going to do it, I'm not going to do it your way. You can if you want. Personally, I'd rather not report bugs at all. Until you've reported vulnerabilities to two or three dozen different projects, this might not mean much, but: It burns you out to keep reporting the same flaws to different projects. Having developers respond to security risks with an air of entitlement just turns up the heat on the burn-out engine. The first response to my comment here was You should send in a pull request, or file a bug report in the repo. Pay attention to the order of operations here. The "should" is immediately associated with a large amount of unpaid work, with an alternative that would also be a large amount of unpaid work disguised as a hypothetically smaller amount of effort. But as others have stated: It's not. > It's not surprising CiPHPerCoder got the reaction he did - it is, however, surprising he decided to do all this under his company's name. Even if I had remembered to switch Github accounts, people would still associate it with my employer anyway. Kind of a moot point, really. I gave you what you asked for. Next time, maybe don't tell people what they should do? It's rude to bark orders like that, and it won't get the result you want.

joepie91_ 10y ago

> That said, even if you submit a pull request or an issue ticket and the maintainer doesn't follow up, or is making the issue unnecessarily complicated to resolve formally and merge into the main branch, at least the record of your findings is there attached to the repo as a rejected pull request or a closed issue ticket, and that can help someone who comes along after the fact who maybe experienced the same issue you did and can benefit from your comments. Maybe that same person who comes along later will have the time to fight for having the changes merged, and can use your comments as further evidence that the issue is worth reconsidering. In my experience, this is a continuous source of frustration and anxiety. Not responding doesn't stop the notifications, and on top of that it also makes the contributor look bad by ignoring follow-ups. It's much easier and less frustrating to just not file anything in the first place. > I stand by the idea that finding the issue, but posting it on an unrelated forum (like HN) instead of attaching it to the project itself serves no purpose than to tell others who are probably not even users of the open source code "look at this problem I found/solved, aren't I great?" This is just flat-out bullshit, and frankly says more about you and your assumptions than about CiPHPer (who, for the record, is somebody I know personally). Have you considered that maybe CiPHPer is just tired of arguing with vendors and getting nowhere, and has now resorted to just publicizing their fuckups in the hope that maybe that will change something? To be clear: nobody owes any vendor anything. While I personally at least attempt to disclose a vulnerability privately before going public, there is absolutely no requirement to do this. It is first and foremost the vendor's responsibility to keep their software and its dependencies up-to-date, not that of the public. Be happy that it's being reported at all, rather than just quietly sold on the black market. The reality is that vendors have been grossly negligent of security for the past several decades, and still continue to do so, using all kinds of shit excuses about how much time and money it costs to fix something they shouldn't have fucked up in the first place. Don't be surprised when security researchers get tired of that shit, and just start dumping vulnerabilities publicly when there are indications that the vendor is negligent (like is the case here). Again: the change here is to come from the vendors, not from the security researchers.