OpenSSF sings a Siren song to steer developers away from buggy FOSS

Securing open source software may soon become a little bit easier thanks to a new vulnerability info-sharing effort initiated by the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF).

Dubbed OpenSSF Siren, the threat intelligence sharing group aims to “aggregate and disseminate threat intelligence” to provide real-time security warning bulletins and deliver a community-driven knowledge base, the Foundation announced in a Monday statement.

OpenSSF hopes Siren can fill the gap between the open-source and enterprise communities. Both FOSS developers and teams that are responsible for managing security threats are encouraged to sign up.

“The goal of SIREN is to complement and augment existing channels of information , such as project blogs and advisories and critical mailing] lists such as the oss-security for broader audiences,” OpenSSF said in its description of Siren’s purpose in its contributor guidelines.

Among the items OpenSSF hopes will be shared on Siren are tactics, techniques, and procedures being used by those who attack open source software, plus indicators of compromise associated with recent incidents. The Foundation doesn’t intend Siren to be a place to disclose new flaws, instead intending it to serve as a “post-disclosure means of keeping the community informed of threats and activities after the initial sharing and coordination.”

Security issues in open source software have become increasingly important of late, after high-profile software supply chain attacks like the xz vulnerability and Log4Shell demonstrated that critical flaws can be present in widely used code.

More recently, the OpenJS Foundation received a series of emails from suspicious individuals attempting to worm their way onto the maintainer lists for several of the JavaScript projects it hosts.

Luckily for OpenJS, it spotted those suspicious emails. The not-so mythical lone open-source dev keeping a critical project alive, on the other hand, may lack those resources. This can make it far easier for a determined supply chain attacker to find an entry point.

Semiconductor design tools vendor Synopsys’ most recent yearly look at open source software security considered over 1.000 code bases and found 96 percent contained open source code. Of those, 84 percent included an open-source component with at least one vulnerability.

“Now, more than ever, the open source community needs a centralized platform to exchange threat intelligence efficiently,” OpenSSF said. “Whether you’re a developer, maintainer, or security enthusiast, your participation is vital in safeguarding the integrity of open source software.” ®

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