[PATCH 2/3] Documentation: security-bugs: explain what is and is not a security bug

Willy Tarreau
2026-04-26T16:47:43Z

The use of automated tools to find bugs in random locations of the kernel
induces a raise of security reports even if most of them should just be
reported as regular bugs. This patch is an attempt at drawing a line
between what qualifies as a security bug and what does not, hoping to
improve the situation.

Cc: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>
Suggested-by: Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
---

Leon, while we started this list before our discussion, I reused most of
your proposal which was more comprehensive, and merged our initial work
into it. I added you in Suggested-by: but I think that Co-developed-by:
would be more suitable. If so, for this you'll have to also sign-off the
patch. It's as you prefer, I personally don't care.

---
Documentation/process/security-bugs.rst | 50 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 50 insertions(+)

diff --git a/Documentation/process/security-bugs.rst b/Documentation/process/security-bugs.rst
index a8a8fc724e8c8..7cc3a1970ca00 100644
--- a/Documentation/process/security-bugs.rst
+++ b/Documentation/process/security-bugs.rst
@@ -66,6 +66,56 @@ In addition, the following information are highly desirable:
the issue appear. It is useful to share them, as they can be helpful to
keep end users protected during the time it takes them to apply the fix.

+What qualifies as a security bug
+--------------------------------
+
+It is important that most bugs are handled publicly so as to involve the widest
+possible audience and find the best solution. By nature, bugs that are handled
+in closed discussions between a small set of participants are less likely to
+produce the best possible fix (e.g., risk of missing valid use cases, limited
+testing abilities).
+
+It turns out that the majority of the bugs reported to the security team are
+just regular bugs that have been improperly qualified as security bugs due to a
+misunderstanding of the Linux kernel's threat model, and ought to have been
+sent through the normal channels described in
+'Documentation/admin-guide/reporting-issues.rst'.
+
+The security list exists for urgent bugs that grant an attacker a capability
+they are not supposed to have on a correctly configured production system, and
+can be easily exploited, representing an imminent threat to many users. Before
+reporting, consider whether the issue actually crosses a trust boundary on such
+a system.
+
+In the Linux kernel's threat model, an issue is **not** a security bug, and
+should not be reported to the security list, when triggering it requires the
+reporter to first undermine the system they are attacking. This includes, but
+is not limited to, behavior that only manifests after the administrator has
+explicitly enabled it (loading a module, setting a sysctl, writing to a debugfs
+knob, or otherwise using an interface documented as privileged or unsafe); bugs
+reachable only through root or CAP_SYS_ADMIN or CAP_NET_ADMIN on a machine the
+actor already fully controls, with no further privilege boundary being crossed;
+prediction of random numbers that only works in a totally silent environment
+(such as IP ID, TCP ports or sequence numbers that can only be guessed in a
+lab), issues that appear only in debug, lockdep, KASAN, fault-injection,
+CONFIG_NOMMU, or other developer-oriented kernel builds that are not intended
+for production use; problems seen only under development simulators, emulators,
+or fuzzing harnesses that present hardware or input states which cannot occur
+on real systems; bugs that require modified or emulated hardware; missing
+hardening or defence-in-depth suggestions with no demonstrable exploit path
+(including local ASLR bypass); mounting file systems that would be fixed or
+rejected by fsck; and bugs in out-of-tree modules or vendor forks, which should
+be reported to the relevant vendor. Functional and performance regressions,
+and disagreements with documented kernel policy (for example, "root can load
+modules"), are likewise ordinary bugs or feature requests rather than security
+issues, and should be reported via the usual channels.
+
+If you are unsure whether an issue qualifies, err on the side of reporting
+privately: the security team would rather triage a borderline report than miss
+a real vulnerability. Reporting ordinary bugs to the security list, however,
+does not make them move faster and consumes triage capacity that other reports
+need.
+
Identifying contacts
--------------------

--
2.52.0