We Speak CVE

Learn how CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) partners—ranging from large to small organizations, proprietary and open-source products or projects, disparate business sectors, and different geographic locations—are overseen and supported within the CVE Program by “Top-Level Roots” and “Roots.” Topics include the roles and responsibilities of the two different types of Roots; how their work benefits the CNAs under their care; how they recruit new CNA partners, including suggestions for addressing upper management concerns if a CNA prospect organization is hesitant to partner as a CNA; how they work with and support their CNAs over time; how the “Council of Roots” works together to enhance and help improve the program overall; and much more. All current CVE Program Top-Level Roots and Roots are represented in this podcast.

In addition to host Shannon Sabens of CrowdStrike, speakers include Julia Turkevich of the CISA Top-Level Root and CISA ICS Root, Dave Morse of the MITRE Top-Level Root, Cristian Cadenas Sarmiento of the INCIBE Root, Paul Dev of the Google Root, Tomo Ito of the JPCERT/CC Root, and Yogesh Mittal of the Red Hat Root.

LINKS:

• Benefits of being a CNA partner 
• How to become a CNA partner 
• Partner onboarding process 
• List of current CNA partners 

Shannon Sabens of CrowdStrike and Kent Landfield of Trellix, both of whom are CVE Board members and CVE Working Group chairs, speak about how the new CVE Record format — with its new structured data format and optional information fields — will benefit and provide enhanced value to consumers of CVE content moving forward. 

Specific topics discussed include how the new CVE Record format will enable more complete vulnerability information to be captured early on in the advisory process and how that will benefit consumers; the ability for CVE content consumers to streamline and more easily automate their use of CVE Records because the data format is standardized and machine-readable; the automated creation and publication of CVE Records by CVE Numbering Authorities (currently, 320+ CNAs from 35+ countries!), which means more quality CVE Records can be produced at a faster pace than ever before for use by the worldwide community; and, for the ability of official CVE Program “Authorized Data Publishers (ADPs)” to enrich the content of already published CVE Records with additional risk scores, affected product lists, versions, references, translations, and so on, (learn more about ADPs in this CVE podcast).

Vulnerability scoring methods for CVE Records are also discussed, including NVD’s use of CVSS, CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog, and more.

Host Shannon Sabens of CrowdStrike chats with Julia Turkevich of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) about the myths and facts of partnering with the CVE Program as a CVE Numbering Authority (CNA).

Truth and facts about the following myths are discussed:

Myth #1:  Only a specific category of software vendors can become CNAs.
Myth #2:  Organizations cannot leverage their existing vulnerability management and disclosure processes when they become a CNA.
Myth #3:  The requirements for becoming a CNA are overwhelming and extensive.
Myth #4:  A fee is required to become a CNA.
Myth #5:  The CNA onboarding process is too complicated and time-consuming.
Myth #6:  Organizations cannot choose the Top-Level Root or Root they want to work with.

The purpose and overall structure of the CVE Program and CISA's role in recruiting and managing CNAs within its Top-Level Root scope of industrial control system (ICS) and operation technology (OT) are also discussed.

LINKS:

• How to Become a CNA
• CNA Onboarding Process Overview
• CVE Program Structure
• CISA ICS Top-Level Root partner details page
• List of CVE Program Partners

Kris Britton of the CVE Program speaks with Lisa Olson of Microsoft about Microsoft’s journey adopting the new CVE Services and CVE JSON 5.0 into their vulnerability management infrastructure and how they used them for the first time as part of Microsoft’s February 2023 Patch Tuesday.

Discussion topics include the CVE JSON 5.0 schema mind map and other schema resources on GitHub; reviewing CVE JSON 5.0 records on the CVE.ORG website; using Vulnogram, or one of the other CVE Services clients, for creating, editing, and reviewing CVE JSON 5.0 records; leveraging the CVE Services Test Environment (learn more here); how separate credentials are required for the official CVE Services and the CVE Services Test Environment; learning about CVE Services and CVE JSON 5.0 updates by attending Automation Working Group (AWG), Quality Working Group (QWG), and CNA Coordination Working Group (CNACWG) meetings; leveraging the CVE Services Slack channel for support; and more.

Resources mentioned in the podcast: https://www.cve.org/Media/News/item/podcast/2023/03/08/Microsofts-Journey-CVE-Services-CVE-JSON-5 

Shannon Sabens of CrowdStrike chats with Madison Oliver of GitHub Security Lab about the recent release of OpenSSF’s “Guidance for Security Researchers to Coordinate Vulnerability Disclosures with Open Source Software Projects” document and the important step of obtaining a CVE ID in the coordinated vulnerability disclosure process for open-source vulnerabilities.

OpenSSF is a “cross-industry organization that brings together the industry’s most important open source security initiatives and the individuals and companies that support them.” The CVD Guide was released by OpenSSF’s Vulnerability Disclosure working group in September 2022, which in 2021 released its “Guide to Implementing a Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure Process for Open Source Projects” document, both of which are discussed by Shannon and Madison. 

Other discussion topics in this episode include the importance of finders (e.g., security researchers, hackers, academics, bug bounty hunters, etc.) in vulnerability management, how finders can expedite their requests to software owners with quality information in their initial requests, OpenSSF’s vulnerability report template and how using it can help with requests, importance of obtaining a CVE ID for open source and all vulnerabilities, best practices for working with CVE Numbering Authorities (CNAs), managing expectations for turnaround times, the CVE Program’s CVE Record Dispute Policy, why all participants should remember that they are interacting with people in all aspects of the vulnerability management process, and more.

 LINKS:

OpenSSF CVD Guide – https://github.com/ossf/oss-vulnerability-guide/blob/main/finder-guide.md#readme

OpenSSF vulnerability report template – https://github.com/ossf/oss-vulnerability-guide/blob/main/templates/notifications/disclosure.md 

OpenSSF Implementing a CVD Process Guide – https://github.com/ossf/oss-vulnerability-guide/blob/main/maintainer-guide.md#readme 

CVE Record Dispute Policy – https://www.cve.org/Resources/General/Policies/CVE-Record-Dispute-Policy.pdf

CNAs – https://www.cve.org/ProgramOrganization/CNAs

Shannon Sabens of CrowdStrike and Tod Beardsley of Rapid7, both of whom are CVE Board members and CVE Working Group chairs, chat about the CVE Program from their insider’s perspectives.

Topics include the value of a federated program of CVE Numbering Authorities (CNAs) from around the world for increased assignment of CVE Records; the upside and minimal requirements to becoming a CNA; the types of organizations that are CNAs; how CNAs are a community with a mentoring program; how CNAs assigning CVE Identifiers (CVE IDs) benefits the global IT community; CVE versus NVD; how CNAs impact the program by participating in CVE Working Groups, be it for one-off or longer-term contributions; and how the CVE Program is about people working to improve cybersecurity for all.

Tod also writes about many of these topics in his article, An Inside Look at What Makes the CVE Program Tick, on SCMagazine.

Shannon Sabens of CrowdStrike chats with Madison Oliver of GitHub Security Lab about how and why CVEs are assigned, the value of CVEs in vulnerability management, responsible coordination of vulnerability disclosures, the importance of comprehensiveness in security advisories, and why there is no stigma in a CVE. CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) scopes, disclosure policies, turnaround times, and more are discussed in general, as are GitHub’s specific CNA processes and how it helps open-source projects hosted on GitHub with their CVEs and advisories.

Madison also writes about many of these topics in her blog article, Removing the Stigma of a CVE, on the GitHub Blog.

Shannon Sabens of CrowdStrike and Milind Kulkarni of a NVIDIA discuss what security researchers should expect when reporting vulnerabilities to a Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT); how to best to collaborate with them; how to interpret responses from the PSIRT; how to get the best outcome when making a report; supported versus end-of-life (EOL) products; CVE Numbering Authority (CNA) scopes; timing of a patch versus the publication of a CVE Record; and more. 

Lisa Olson of Microsoft and Kris Britton of the CVE Program speak with Kelly Todd of the CVE Program about the transition that’s currently underway for CVE Numbering Authorities (CNAs) to CVE Services 2.1 and CVE JSON 5.0. Their discussion includes how the new services and data format will enable effective and secure automation, improve workflows, and reduce the transaction costs of program participation for CNAs, as well as provide enhanced information in CVE Records for use by downstream consumers.

Specific topics include how the CVE Services 2.1 web application adds the CVE Record Submission and Upload Service (RSUS) for publishing CVE Records and updating them over time to the previously released CVE ID Reservation (IDR) service, and how these two services will work effectively together for CNAs. Also discussed is how the new CVE JSON 5.0 data format provides the ability for CNAs to be more consistent with handling product versioning in CVE Records, among numerous other data enhancements to CVE Records; the programmatic conversion of CVE Records from JSON 4.0 to 5.0 and what is needed from CNAs regarding their converted records; the plan for an interactive, hands-on “CVE Global Summit 2022” to make the transition to the new the services and data format easier for CNAs; the planned deployment process and schedule; and more.