Looks good to me!
k
From: [mailto:]
On Behalf Of Larry Golding (Comcast)
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 3:15 PM
To: Luke Cartey <>; Michael Fanning <>; David Keaton <>; Mr. Stefan Hagen <>; 'OASIS SARIF TC Discussion List' <>
Subject: [sarif] RE: IANA media type registration
Importance: High
Hello all,
I wrote the “Security Considerations” section for our
IANA media type registration. For your convenience, I reproduce it here. Please comment!
Security considerations:
Producers and consumers of SARIF files should consider the following security-related issues:
1) SARIF files contain results produced by static analysis tools. These results might
describe security vulnerabilities, or other defects that should not be disclosed, in the
software being analyzed. Since SARIF is a textual format with no provision for protecting
potentially sensitive results, SARIF should only be used in an environment that provides an
appropriate level of security. For example, SARIF files might be stored on a file share with
limited permissions, or transmitted by means of an encrypted protocol such as HTTPS.
2) SARIF files contain URIs which specify the location of the files that were analyzed.
If these URIs are absolute, they might disclose information about the system on which the
analysis took place, such as the name of the engineer, for example: "file://C:/Users/MarySmith/src/ui/window.c".
For this reason, URIs should be specified as relative references, for example: "ui/window.c".
Even relative URIs might disclose sensitive information about the implementation of the software,
for example, "encryption/sha1.c". For this reason, again, SARIF should only be used in an
environment that provides sufficient security.
3) SARIF provides a property run.originalBaseUriIds whose purpose is explicitly to provide the
absolute URI ("file:/Users/MarySmith") with respect to which relative references such as
"ui/window.c" are evaluated. This property discloses information, and should only be used
in an environment that provides sufficient security.
4) SARIF provides an object named invocation which contains information about how the static
analysis tool was invoked. Many of its properties (for example, machine, account, and
environmentVariables) disclose information about the machine on which the analysis took
place. These properties should only be used in an environment that provides sufficient
security.
5) The URIs in a SARIF file might point to insecure resources such as malicious web sites.
They might also contain executable code (for example, in a "_javascript_:" URI). SARIF
producers should not emit such URIs. SARIF consumers should take care not to follow
malicious links. In practice, this means that end users should not open SARIF files
unless they trust the producer.
6) User-visible messages in SARIF files can be expressed either in plain text or in a rich
text format (by default, GitHub-flavored Markdown). Markdown can contain arbitrary HTML,
which poses a security risk. SARIF producers should not emit HTML. SARIF consumers should
sanitize the Markdown they receive (for example, by removing embedded HTML). SARIF consumers
should process Markdown with a Markdown processor that allows HTML processing to be disabled,
and that guards against stack overflows induced by maliciously constructed Markdown.
7) SARIF defines an extensibility mechanism that allows SARIF producers to include arbitrary
properties in a SARIF file (information that is not explicitly defined in the SARIF format).
If a SARIF producer uses this mechanism to define a property that contains executable code or
script, and if SARIF consumer that is aware of this property executes the content, this might
permit an attack. SARIF producers should not emit executable content. If they do, a SARIF
consumer that is aware of that content should execute it only if it trusts the producer.
Thanks,
Larry
From: Larry Golding (Comcast) <>
Sent: Monday, June 25, 2018 2:28 PM
To: Luke Cartey <>; Michael Fanning <>; David Keaton <>; Mr. Stefan Hagen
<>
Cc: 'Robin Cover' <>
Subject: IANA media type registration
Hi Luke,
IIRC, you are going to handle the IANA media type registration. As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m going to provide the “Security considerations” section. I’m now ready to do that.
For convenience in collaborating on this registration, I created a document
IANA media type registration form.txt in our repo’s Documents folder. I filled in a few fields, and will now add the Security section.
It’s plain text to make it easier to paste it into IANA’s
Application for a media type web form when we’re ready.
Thanks,
Larry
