2025-01-23 Meeting notes

@Craig McNally 

@Julian Ladisch 

2025-01-30

@Axel Dörrer 

@Ryan Berger 

@Chris Rutledge 

@Jakub Skoczen 

@John Coburn 

@Skott Klebe 

@Kevin Day

@Jens Heinrich

@Tom Gorman (Guest)

10-15 min

Tom Gorman introduction

@Tom Gorman

Tom Gorman, a security expert at EBSCO has expressed interest in joining the Security Team.  This is an opportunity to familiarize ourselves with his background, get aligned on expectations, etc.

• Security Architect with EBSCO (3+ years)

• Works with Skott K.

• Helping with LoC compliance requirements, FEDRAMP, etc.

• Software development background, then transitioned to security.

<5 min

Issue tagging idea

@Jens Heinrich

Idea: Have a Tag security-preparedness or similar for the preventative upgrade issues so we can regularly remind the teams to upgrade their dependencies. Let's talk about this next week

• Seems like a good idea, and can help increase visibility of these issues.

• May also help the Security team streamline weekly meetings

• Once we have the label in place and it's being used, we should update our filters/boards accordingly...

  • Exclude these by default 

  • Add a quick filter?

  • etc.

• @Jens Heinrich will try to update the filters

• Do we need other tags as well?  e.g. "EOL"?

• @Jens Heinrich created an initial filter to select all issues relevant to the security working group
  (security, security-preparedness,security-reviewed or inside the project)
  https://folio-org.atlassian.net/issues/?filter=13145

• based on that another new filter to select the ones not yet reviewed, but it seems to be too broad still
  https://folio-org.atlassian.net/issues/?filter=13144 

• and one to track the progress of security related issues
  https://folio-org.atlassian.net/issues/?filter=13104

Last week:

• Let's add these to the Kanban board as quick filters.

• @Jens Heinrich will create a new board based on the issue list filter linked below.  Then add the quick filters.  Should:

  • include SECURITY issues (quick filter to toggle)

  • include issues in other projects with the "security" label

  • not include closed/completed/rejected issues (quick filter to toggle)

  • quick filters for security-preparedness, eventually EOL, etc.

Today:

• WIP board:  https://folio-org.atlassian.net/jira/people/613f23fc481377006b9d0342/boards/264

• TODO:

  • Add a column for "under review".  This will replace the filter we have linked below for this.

0 min

Jira Group and Security Level review

Team

From Craig in slack:

I've been in communication with David Crossley, Wayne Schneider, John Malconian and Peter Murray about the issue above.  They apparently didn't have access to these embargoed issues (SysOps and Core Team).  Peter shared this screenshot with me, which doesn't look right.  I'd like to review this at one of our meetings and come up with a list of changes/improvements for Peter to make.  A few ideas off the top of my head:

1. Add descriptions to each of the security groups, like we have for "FOLIO Security Group"

2. Maybe add a new security group and level for FOLIO devops

3. Review membership of each of these groups and remove users no longer on the project

4. Review the Security Level -> Group mappings.  Some of these don't look quite right to me.

• If it makes this easier, we could invite Peter to a meeting so we can see the groups/levels interactively and makes adjustments as we go

• Not exactly this, but related... 

  • Issues submitted to the SECURITY JIRA project should automatically be embargoed (Security Level = Folio Security Group)

  • The submitter of issues to the SECURITY JIRA project should be able to view issues they submit, regardless of their Security Level

  • Email notification sent to the Folio Security Group when an issue is created in the SECURITY Jira project.

• Action:  @Craig McNally to setup a meeting with Peter and representatives from the Security Team to work through these things after WOLFcon?  

  • We need to look into how security level configuration works to gain a better understanding of why it behaves the way it does.  

    • Why do we have All Folio Developers in the "Sys Ops and Core Team" security level?

Today:

• (Craig) no progress due to lack of time to spend on this.  Does someone else have time to work through this with Peter?

5 min

Policy for deprecating and eventually removing unsupported code

Team

The idea is to draft a proposal policy for this and run it by the TC for approval...

"mod-foo has known security vulnerabilities which are high/critical and have not been addressed in N months.  If these aren't addressed within N months the repository will be archived"  Something like that...

• Communication will be key here... Need to sort out the details.

@Jens Heinrich created a draft and @Julian Ladisch gave inputs on better handling of edge cases

A dedicated page has been created at  https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/x/KAAHJw

• Awareness has been raised with the TC.  Some comments have been left.

• Let's discuss in the new year when Jens is around.

Today:

• TC approved this proposal on Jan 22, 2025.  

• Next Steps?

  • Who is responsible for deciding where this is published?  

  • Action:  @Craig McNally will discuss with @Jenn Colt about this

    • Maybe a decision record is the right thing to do.

• Can remove this from upcoming meeting agendas.  The TC has the ball here.

*

Anything Urgent?
Review Mike's Kanban board?
Review Security board?
Review labels=security?

Under Review Filter: 

Team

• There are several issues that need to be reviewed & potentially closed.  

• @Craig McNally to bring https://folio-org.atlassian.net/browse/SECURITY-218 to the Eureka team and will create JIRAs (Spikes/stories/documentation work/etc.) if needed.

Time permitting

Advice for handling of sensitive banking information

Team

From slack conversation, I think I've gathered the following:

• In this case (bank account and transit numbers), the information is highly sensitive.  

  • Highly sensitive information should:

    • Be stored in it's own table

    • Accessed via a dedicated API

    • Protected by a dedicated permission

    • Encrypted in the database, not only on disk.  

      • This could mean either:

        • Explicitly encrypting/decrypting in the application layer and storing the encrypted data in postgres

        • Utilizing postgres extensions/modules to encypt certain columns, e.g. via pgcrypto (see https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/encryption-options.html)

Let's review and discuss before providing this feedback to Raman.

@Axel Dörrer also suggested that defining classes of sensitivity could help teams determine which techniques are applicable in various situations.  I agree having some general guidelines on this would be helpful.

• regular data

  • low sensitive - permission based on same API

  • high sensitive - permission based on dedicated API

It would probably help to provide concrete examples of data in each class.  This can be a longer term effort, we don't need to sort out all the details today.

• Next Steps:

  • Clearly define/formalize the various classes

    • Come up with concrete examples of each class

    • Build out guidance

      • Come up with concrete examples of how to protect each class of data.

    • Consider storing some classes of data outside of postgres altogether - e.g. in secret storage.

      • What would be the guidance we provide to teams for this so we don't end up with each team doing things differently?

      • SecretStore interface and existing implementations are currently only read-only.  They would need to be extended to allow for creation/mgmt of this information.

    • Craig to start a conversation in slack about this.

      • Seeking a volunteer to generate a draft document for us to review at a later meeting.

Today:

@Axel Dörrer to do a first draft as a base for further discussions

Status on pentesting works within Network traffic control group

@Axel Dörrer 

Due to some absences on different reasons the group stalled. Axel will try to reactivate the group.

Okapi Debian Package https://folio-org.atlassian.net/browse/FOLIO-3896

• We're officially dropping support for this going forward - no new debian packages will be created.

• Once the last version of the debian packages is out of the support window we can call this done.

• Revisit this around Ramsons GA