Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2004 17:10:10 +0200 From: Oliver Eikemeier <eikemeier@fillmore-labs.com> To: "Jacques A. Vidrine" <nectar@FreeBSD.org> Cc: Tom Rhodes <trhodes@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: making <description> optional Message-ID: <86914F26-F516-11D8-8CAA-00039312D914@fillmore-labs.com> In-Reply-To: <20040823141803.GN27355@madman.celabo.org>
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Jacques A. Vidrine wrote: > On Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 11:56:42PM +0200, Oliver Eikemeier wrote: >> Jacques A. Vidrine wrote: >> 60 (in words: sixty) entries in portaudit have the description `Please >> contact the FreeBSD Security Team for more information'. There are >> references, so when you care to add a quote, feel free, in fact this >> might be a job for the security team. You can frown on them as often as >> you like, the question is whether you just want to have an optional >> <description> entry as an easy to spot sign that an editor is needed, >> or >> if you prefer to search for <p/> and similar constructs. > > I'm not sure what you are talking about. I don't see any such entries > in VuXML ... but you said `portaudit' so maybe you are talking about > your personal database? I have a supplementary databases that are as much `personal' as vuxml is. The portaudit text database has been announced and documented as mentioned in a previous discussion. Anyway, I think making the entry optional would be the best solution, but if you prefer a placeholder, we can keep `Please contact the FreeBSD Security Team for more information'. >>> However, I must admit that I have some doubt the value of the >>> <discovery> date in any case. What I'd really like to hear are some >>> arguments for keeping it or getting rid of it! I think it is useful >>> information of itself to many reading VuXML content, and that combined >>> with <entry> it provides a good metric about our response time. But I >>> could be overestimating the value of it, and if it somehow puts people >>> off to need to provide this information, then maybe it loses. >> >> Oviously we have a different opinion what is useful here. I expect most >> users to be simple consumers, not security researchers. They need >> information about the serverity of a vulnerability, and maybe >> remote/local exploitability, whoever cares about the discovery date >> could check the references. Often I find the discovery date >> entertaining, but not useful. > > So I'll take that as a vote for not keeping it (<discovery>). Such > a change (dropping required content) would need to take place in a > `major' update e.g. VuXML 2.0. We'll revisit it then, maybe someone > else will add some opinions before then. Whatever you like. Simply using dummy values is fine with me. -Oliver
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