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title: Apache CloudStack Security
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<h1 id="indicators">Apache CloudStack: Security</h1>

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The Apache CloudStack project understands that as a core infrastructure project, the application security of Apache CloudStack is of critical importance to the community and users.

## Reporting Potential Vulnerabilities in Apache CloudStack

If you've found an issue that you believe is a security vulnerability in a released version of CloudStack, please report it to the [ASF security team](http://www.apache.org/security/) via email to [security@apache.org](mailto:security@apache.org) with details about the vulnerability, how it might be exploited, and any additional information that might be useful.

Upon notification, the ASF security team will work with the CloudStack PMC through validation and fixing the issue. If the issue is validated, it generally takes 2-4 weeks from notification to public announcement of the vulnerability. During this time, the team will communicate with you as they proceed through the response procedure, and ask that the issue not be announced before an agreed-upon date.

**Please do not create publicly-viewable JIRA tickets related to the issue**. If validated, a JIRA ticket with the security flag set will be created for tracking the issue in a non-public manner, and made public at the appropriate time.

## Procedure for Responding to Potential Security Issues

Overall, this procedure follows the Apache Security Team's procedures documented [here](http://www.apache.org/security/committers.html).

<ul>
  <li>Upon receiving notice of a potential security issue, a security team member will create a bug to track the investigation, this bug must be flagged as a security issue. Security flag should mean contents of ticket are not visible to non-security team members</li>
  <li>ACS PMC investigates the issue to confirm/deny the presence of a vulnerability within CloudStack</li>
  <li>If the issue is determined not to be a vulnerability the reporter will be notified and the issue will be closed as invalid</li>
  <li>If issue is confirmed as a CloudStack vulnerability:
    <ul>
      <li>ACS PMC confirms with the Apache Security Team</li>
      <li>ACS PMC assigns a risk rating to the vulnerability using the Common Vulnerability Scoring System</li>
      <li>ACS PMC team works with reporter to get a chance to investigate and mitigate the issue in a timely manner before public announcement. This should be between 15-30 days, depending on the severity and complexity of the issue</li>
      <li>ACS PMC works with Apache Security Team to reserve a CVE Identifier for future public release</li>
      <li>ACS PMC works with appropriate code maintainer(s) to create patch to mitigate the issue</li>
      <li>Testing is conducted to verify patch mitigates issue and does not cause regression errors</li>
      <li>ACS PMC creates a vulnerability announcement</li>
      <li>Patch is committed to trunk and other supported branches that are affected.  The commit should not refer to a particular vulnerability</li>
      <li>A new CloudStack release or hotfix is prepared and tested, containing the new security patch</li>
      <li>Distributor coordination is implemented to enable a coordinated announcement</li>
      <li>Security team posts vulnerability announcement to...
        <ul>
          <li>CloudStack dev list</li>
          <li>CloudStack users list</li>
          <li>The Bugtraq mailing list</li>
        </ul>
      </li>
      <li>After announcement, CHANGES and NEWS files need to be updated to reflect the vulnerability and fix. This must happen AFTER the announcement.</li>
      <li>Also after announcement, modify the Jira ticket so that the issue is now publicly viewable.</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>After the vulnerability is addressed, the CloudStack community should review development processes to see how the community can minimize the chance of similar vulnerabilities being introduced in the future.</li>
</ul>

## For further information

Further information about Apache CloudStack's security practices can be found in the [CloudStack Security wiki page](https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/CloudStack+Security).