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      Michael Catanzaro: Don’t Forget: Unset Confidentiality on Private Issue Reports

      news.movim.eu / PlanetGnome • 19:21

    It’s hard to evaluate the security of open source projects when security bug reports remain private forever. Users deserve to see security bug reports, so please remember to unset issue report confidentiality when you’re done handling an issue. There are very few good reasons to keep an issue report confidential forever. If you’re not planning to disclose the issue report within the next few months, it should probably already already be public.

    For GNOME, I disclose issues whenever a merge request has been created or a fix lands in the git repo, or 30 days after the issue was reported , whichever comes first. Your project might prefer to wait until the fix is released before disclosing, especially if you fear that a vulnerability might actually be exploited during the window between the fix and release. Whatever you choose, please don’t forget about it and leave the issue report confidential forever. That’s not fair to your project’s users. Even if not many people will take the time to look, users should at least have a chance to see reported issues.