About disclosing vulnerabilities in the industry
漏洞披露是漏洞报告者（如安全研究人员）和项目维护者之间协作非常重要的领域。 双方需要从发现潜在有害安全漏洞的那一刻起共同努力，直到向世界披露漏洞，最好有可用的修补程序。 通常，当有人让维护者私下了解安全漏洞时，维护者会开发修复程序、验证修复程序并通知项目或包的用户。
The initial report of a vulnerability is made privately, and the full details are only published once the maintainer has acknowledged the issue, and ideally made remediations or a patch available, sometimes with a delay to allow more time for the patches to be installed. For more information, see the OWASP Cheat Sheet Series about vulnerability disclosure on the OWASP Cheat Sheet Series website.
Best practices for vulnerability reporters
It's good practice to report vulnerabilities privately to maintainers. When possible, as a vulnerability reporter, we recommend you avoid:
- Disclosing the vulnerability publicly without giving maintainers a chance to remediate.
- Bypassing the maintainers.
- Disclosing the vulnerability before a fixed version of the code is available.
- Expecting to be compensated for reporting an issue, where no public bounty program exists.
It's acceptable for vulnerability reporters to disclose a vulnerability publicly after a period of time, if they have tried to contact the maintainers and not received a response, or contacted them and been asked to wait too long to disclose it.
We recommend vulnerability reporters clearly state the terms of their disclosure policy as part of their reporting process. Even if the vulnerability reporter does not adhere to a strict policy, it's a good idea to set clear expectations for maintainers in terms of timelines on intended vulnerability disclosures. For an example of disclosure policy, see the Security Lab's disclosure policy on the GitHub Security Lab website.
Best practices for maintainers
As a maintainer, it's good practice to clearly indicate how and where you want to receive reports for vulnerabilities. If this information is not clearly available, vulnerability reporters don't know how to contact you, and may resort to extracting developer email addresses from git commit histories to try to find an appropriate security contact. This can lead to friction, lost reports, or the publication of unresolved reports.
Maintainers should disclose vulnerabilities in a timely manner. If there is a security vulnerability in your repository, we recommend you:
- Treat the vulnerability as a security issue rather than a simple bug, both in your response and your disclosure. For example, you'll need to explicitly mention that the issue is a security vulnerability in the release notes.
- Acknowledge receipt of the vulnerability report as quickly as possible, even if no immediate resources are available for investigation. This sends the message that you are quick to respond and act, and it sets a positive tone for the rest of the interaction between you and the vulnerability reporter.
- Involve the vulnerability reporter when you verify the impact and veracity of the report. It's likely the vulnerability reporter has already spent time considering the vulnerability in a variety of scenarios, some of which you may have not considered yourself.
- Remediate the issue in a way that you see fit, taking any concerns and advice provided by the vulnerability reporter into careful consideration. Often the vulnerability reporter will have knowledge of certain corner cases and remediation bypasses that are easy to miss without a security research background.
- Always acknowledge the vulnerability reporter when you credit the discovery.
- Aim to publish a fix as soon as you can.
- Ensure that you make the wider ecosystem aware of the issue and its remediation when you disclose the vulnerability. It is not uncommon to see cases where a recognized security issue is fixed in the current development branch of a project, but the commit or subsequent release is not explicitly marked as a security fix or release. This can cause problems with downstream consumers.
Publishing the details of a security vulnerability doesn't make maintainers look bad. Security vulnerabilities are present everywhere in software, and users will trust maintainers who have a clear and established process for disclosing security vulnerabilities in their code.
About reporting and disclosing vulnerabilities in projects on GitHub
There are two processes available on GitHub:
- The standard process: Vulnerability reporters get in touch with the repository maintainers, using contact information located in the security policy for the repository. The repository maintainers then create a draft repository advisory if required.
- Private vulnerability reporting: Vulnerability reporters disclose vulnerability details directly and privately to the repository maintainers by proposing a draft repository advisory and providing details of their findings.
Standard process
The process for reporting and disclosing vulnerabilities for projects on GitHub is as follows:
If you are a vulnerability reporter (for example, a security researcher) who would like report a vulnerability, first check if there is a security policy for the related repository. For more information, see Adding a security policy to your repository. If there is one, follow it to understand the process before contacting the security team for that repository.
If there isn't a security policy in place, the most efficient way to establish a private means of communication with maintainers is to create an issue asking for a preferred security contact. It's worth noting that the issue will be immediately publicly visible, so it should not include any information about the bug. Once communication is established, you can suggest the maintainers define a security policy for future use.
注意
For npm only - If we receive a report of malware in an npm package, we try to contact you privately. If you don't address the issue in a timely manner, we will disclose it. For more information, see Reporting malware in an npm package on the npm Docs website.
If you've found a security vulnerability in GitHub, please report the vulnerability through our coordinated disclosure process. For more information, see the GitHub Security Bug Bounty website.
If you are a maintainer, you can take ownership of the process at the very beginning of the pipeline by setting up a security policy for your repository, or otherwise making security reporting instructions clearly available, for example in your project’s README file. For information about adding a security policy, see Adding a security policy to your repository. If there is no security policy, it's likely that a vulnerability reporter will try to email you or otherwise privately contact you. Alternatively, someone may open a (public) issue with details of a security issue.
As a maintainer, to disclose a vulnerability in your code, you first create a draft security advisory in the package's repository in GitHub. 使用存储库安全公告，公共存储库的维护人员可私下讨论和修复项目中的安全漏洞。 协作得到修补程序后，存储库维护人员可发布安全通知，向项目社区公开安全漏洞。 通过发布安全通知，存储库维护人员可使其社区更轻松地更新包依赖项并对安全漏洞的影响进行调查。 For more information, see Repository security advisories.
To get started, see Creating a repository security advisory.
Private vulnerability reporting
公共存储库的所有者和管理员可以对其存储库启用专用漏洞报告。 请参阅“Configuring private vulnerability reporting for a repository”。
Private vulnerability reporting provides a secure, structured way for security researchers to privately disclose security risks to repository maintainers directly within GitHub. When a vulnerability is reported, repository maintainers are immediately notified, allowing them to review and respond without the risk of premature public disclosure.
Without clear guidance on how to contact maintainers, security researchers may feel forced to disclose vulnerabilities publicly, such as by posting on social media, opening public issues, or contacting maintainers through informal channels, which can expose users to unnecessary risk.
For security researchers, the benefits of using private vulnerability reporting are:
- A clear, structured way to contact maintainers
- A smoother process for disclosing and discussing vulnerability details
- The ability to discuss vulnerability details privately with the repository maintainer
- Reduced risk of vulnerability details being in the public eye before a fix is available
For maintainers, the benefits of using private vulnerability reporting are:
- 在解析报表的同一平台中接收报告
- 安全研究人员代表维护人员创建或启动咨询报告
- 在修复可用之前，降低漏洞受到公众关注的风险
- 与安全研究人员私下讨论漏洞详细信息并协作处理修补程序的机会
安全研究人员还可以使用 REST API 私下报告安全漏洞。 请参阅“适用于存储库安全公告的 REST API 终结点”。
注意
If the repository containing the vulnerability doesn't have private vulnerability reporting enabled, both security researchers and repository maintainers need to follow the instructions described in the Standard process section above.
Next steps
If you are a security researcher, see Privately reporting a security vulnerability to learn how to privately report a vulnerability to a repository maintainer.
If you are a repository maintainer, see Configuring private vulnerability reporting for a repository to enable private vulnerability reporting for your repository, or Creating a custom security configuration to manage it across your organization.