Binutils Security Process ========================= What is a binutils security bug? ================================ A security bug is one that threatens the security of a system or network, or might compromise the security of data stored on it. In the context of GNU Binutils there are two ways in which such bugs might occur. In the first, the programs themselves might be tricked into a direct compromise of security. In the second, the tools might introduce a vulnerability in the generated output that was not already present in the files used as input. Other than that, all other bugs will be treated as non-security issues. This does not mean that they will be ignored, just that they will not be given the priority that is given to security bugs. This stance applies to the creation tools in the GNU Binutils (eg as, ld, gold, objcopy) and the libraries that they use. Bugs in inspection tools (eg readelf, nm objdump) will not be considered to be security bugs, since they do not create executable output files. Notes: ====== None of the programs in the GNU Binutils suite need elevated privileges to operate and it is recommended that users do not use them from accounts where such privileges are automatically available. The inspection tools are intended to be robust but nevertheless they should be appropriately sandboxed if they are used to examine malicious or potentially malicious input files. Reporting private security bugs =============================== *All bugs reported in the Binutils Bugzilla are public.* In order to report a private security bug that is not immediately public, please contact one of the downstream distributions with security teams. The following teams have volunteered to handle such bugs: Debian: security@debian.org Red Hat: secalert@redhat.com SUSE: security@suse.de Please report the bug to just one of these teams. It will be shared with other teams as necessary. The team contacted will take care of details such as vulnerability rating and CVE assignment (https://cve.mitre.org/about/). It is likely that the team will ask to file a public bug because the issue is sufficiently minor and does not warrant an embargo. An embargo is not a requirement for being credited with the discovery of a security vulnerability. Reporting public security bugs ============================== It is expected that critical security bugs will be rare, and that most security bugs can be reported in Binutils Bugzilla system, thus making them public immediately. The system can be found here: https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/