Episode 203: What’s wrong with CVEs? Daniel Stenberg of cURL wants you to know

Guests Daniel Stenberg | Dan Lorenc Panelist Richard Littauer Show Notes Today, we are switching things up and doing something new for this episode of Sustain, where we’ll be talking about current events, specifically security challenges. Richard welcomes guest, Daniel Stenberg, founder, and lead developer of the cURL project. Richard and Daniel dive into the complexities of Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), discussing issues with how they are reported, scored, and the potential impact on open source maintainers. They also explore the difficulty of fixing the CVE system, propose short-term solutions, and address concerns about CVE-related DDOS attacks. Dan Lorenc, co-founder, and CEO of Chainguard, also joins us and offers insights into the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and suggests ways to improve CVE quality. NDS’s response is examined, and Daniel shares his frustrations and uncertainties regarding the CVE system’s future. Hit download now to hear more! [00:01:00] Richard explains that they will discuss Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and mentions that CVEs were launched in September 1999, briefly highlighting their purpose. He mentions receiving an email about a CVE related to the cURL project, which wasn’t acknowledged by the cURL team. [00:01:50] Daniel explains that the email about the CVE was sent to the cURL library mailing list by a contributor who noticed the issue. He describes the confusion about the old bug being registered as a new CVE. discusses the process of requesting a CVE. He also mentions the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and how it consumes and assigns severity scores to CVEs. [00:03:54] Daniel discusses the process of requesting a CVE which involves organizations like MITRE, and he mentions the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and how it consumes and assigns severity scores to CVEs. [00:06:21] Richard asks about how NVD assigns severity scores to CVEs and specifically in the case of CVE 2020, and Daniel describes the actual bug in curl, which