The Linux Foundation announced the creation of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), its new software security initiative. OpenSSF is a cross-branch collaboration that brings industry leaders together to strengthen the safety of Open Source software by creating a broader community with efficient systems, best practices, and standards. The initiative draws on GitHub’s Open Source Security Alliance and Core Infrastructure Ambition.
The new security foundation also incorporates other work on Open Source technology, including founding board members from GitHub, IBM, Google, Microsoft, JPMorgan Chase, OWASP Foundation, Red Hat, and NCC Group. Other core members are HackerOne, ElevenPaths, GitLab, Intel, Purdue, StackHawk, SAFEcode, Bits Trail, VMware, and Uber.
OpenSSF membership rankings include the most relevant Open Source security programs in the industry, as well as the people and companies that support them. The Core Infrastructure Initiative (CII) of the Linux Foundation, created in response to the 2014 Heartbleed bugs, and the Open Source Security Alliance, established by the GitHub Security Lab, are only two of the initiatives that will come together under the new OpenSSF.
The Foundation’s leadership, experts, and decision-making will be crystal clear, and any specifications, conditions, and projects developed will be vendor-agnostic, per the LF (Linux Foundation). The OpenSSF is committed to helping and working with both existing communities and upstream to improve the security of Open Source for all.
Open-source software is becoming ubiquitous across data centers, end-user devices, utilities, and services. Companies and experts use their technology as much as possible.
Cross-Industry Efforts: Open Source Strategies
Open Source, which ultimately reaches end users, has a chain of contributors and dependencies due to its creation process. It is critical that those responsible for protecting their users or organization, according to an LF official explaining the need for this new initiative, can recognize and verify the security of this dependency chain.
“We believe that Open Source is a public good, and we have a responsibility to come together across every industry to improve and support the security of open source software on which we all depend,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation.
He further said that “in order to ensure Open Source security is one of the most crucial matters we can do, and it involves all of us around the world to help in the effort. OpenSSF will provide that forum for a highly collaborative, cross-industry effort.”
The OpenSSF’s implementation plan is built around an open governance system. It involves a board of governors, a technical and analytical advisory board, and separate regulations for each task force, project, and plan.
OpenSSF aims to sponsor a wide range of technical Open Source projects to strengthen the security of the world’s most crucial Open Source software, all of which will be carried out in the open on GitHub.
The primary Aim is not Expansion – Open Source Strategies
The LF has several categories, groups, experts, and professional communities under its control. According to Chris Aniszczyk, vice president of strategic and dev programs at The Linux Foundation, the purpose is not to establish another.
He stated in an interview with LinuxInsider that “it’s less about building a new organization than centralizing numerous industry and LF activities.”
Grants had mainly funded the Core Infrastructure project. OpenSSF is backed by membership dues from the Linux Foundation, with practical analysis contributions to support the program and experts, he explained. The CII aims to contribute expertise and experience to the OpenSSF and to advocate for preferred projects through its project approval process, led by the OpenSSF TAC.
The organization is bootstrapping, so this month the first business order holds its first board of directors, technical council, and required to workgroup meetings. The best way to get involved, he said, the best approach is to attend one of the WG meetings.
Open Source Strategies and plans
The OpenSSF will go ahead with an aggressive first set of activities, Aniszczyk noted. The initiative demands six main actions.
The goal of an Open Source software environment is security, vulnerability detection, and updates in a responsible way. That issue needs to be assessed in minutes, not in days or months, to fix the vulnerability and implement it across the environment. To that end, OpenSSF is working to create a standardized framework and API for disclosing vulnerabilities and organized reporting to accelerate mass adoption.
The primary goal is protection tooling. The intention should be to provide Open Source programmers and developers with the best and most intelligent security tools and make them widely accessible.
“We want to create a space where representatives can work together to enhance existing security tools and design new ones that address the needs of the wider Open Source community,” Aniszczyk said.
Another key goal is to recognize the security risks of Open Source projects. This will allow stakeholders to build safety and quality into Open Source projects.
Primary goals and expectations of meetings – Open Source Strategies
By defining a set of critical metrics and developing tooling (web UI and API) to communicate them to stakeholders, the group hopes to achieve that goal. This will allow stakeholders to better understand the security posture of individual components of Open Source, Aniszczyk added.
Three other OpenSSF targets include providing Open Source developers with best practices in security. Secondly, securing critical projects will create audits, assurance, response teams, improvements, and hands-on tactical work. Second, it can help projects verify identities in the software supply chain by developing a system to verify developer identities.
Meaningful Initiatives
Enderle indicated that, with the increasing number of attempts to protect Open Source programs in the mix, there is still a possibility of one too many that comes in the way of everyone else.
Aniszczyk told LinuxInsider, “But this effort should help them drill through the confusion to get to a solution because it drives collaboration. So while this may seem additive in terms of complexity, if they execute to plan, it should force the redundant efforts into this one, eventually simplifying the effort and making it more likely to be successful.”
Aniszczyk told LinuxInsider, “But this effort should help them drill through the confusion to get to a solution because it drives collaboration. So while this may seem additive in terms of complexity, if they execute to plan; it should force the redundant efforts into this one, eventually simplifying the effort and making it more likely to be successful.”