[Ksummit-discuss] [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] CVE patches annotation

[Eduardo Valentin <edubezval@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I would like to open a discussion on improving the annotation
around CVE patches on the Linux kernel. Today, the kernel Documentation
mentions about CVE assignment and asks as a good practice to at least
mention the CVE  number in the patch [1]. But, is that enough?
Should the kernel have more info about what patches fixes a specific
CVE?

Some of the challenges with current process:
- The info about of about what CVEs have been patched in a kernel is
  outside the kernel tree / git history.
- Today, some patches have the CVE info, and many others do not mention
  anything about CVE number.
- As mentioned in the kernel documentation [1], not always the CVE
  number is assigned when the patch(es) go into the kernel tree, so
  maybe this may require some post merge annotation?
- It is not always straight forward to know what patches are needed to
  fix the CVE, specially on cases the fix require a series of
  preparation work before the actual fix.

  Specially on the later case, annotation can help, specially while
  backporting.

BR,


[1] - https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/admin-guide/security-bugs.html