This is a collection of Python scripts to make working with the Arch Linux Security Tracker easier.

• CVE entry extraction from multiple sources (currently Chromium, GitLab, Mozilla, NVD, Oracle and WebKitGTK) into a JSON format consumable by the tracker
• Automatic batch addition of the extracted CVE entries to the tracker

• python >= 3.6
• python-click
• python-lxml
• python-requests

CVEs can be extracted from multiple sources. All extractors take the CVEs to be considered as a list of arguments and output the extracted CVE in JSON form. The JSON format follows the one used by the tracker as part of its API endpoints, e.g. https://security.archlinux.org/CVE-2019-9956.json.

./trackertools extract chromium URL...

extracts CVEs issued for Chrome, where URL is the URL of a Chrome release blog post, e.g. https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/2021/05/stable-channel-update-for-desktop.html.

The description is of the form "A type security issue has been found in the component component of the Chromium browser engine before version new_version.", where type, component and new_version are extracted from the blog post. The corresponding severity is taken from the blog post as well. The URL of the blog post and the link to the corresponding Chromium bug report as specified in the blog post are used as references. The attack vector is assumed to be "Remote" by default as Chromium is a browser. The type of the vulnerability is always set to "Unknown" and needs to be filled in by hand by the user.

./trackertools extract gitlab CVE...

extracts CVE entries assigned by the GitLab CNA, for the GitLab products as well as some projects hosted on GitLab. These CVEs are usually added to the NVD database quite quickly as well, but the GitLab entries have more detailed information regarding the CVSS score quicker.

Description and references are taken verbatim from the NVD CVE entry. Severity and attack vector are derived from the CVSS v3. The type of the vulnerability is always set to "Unknown" and needs to be filled by hand by the user.

./trackertools extract mozilla CVE... MFSA...

extracts CVEs issued by Mozilla, mostly for Firefox and Thunderbird. MFSA is an advisory number issued by Mozilla, e.g. mfsa2021-01. If a MFSA is specified, all CVEs included in this advisory will be extracted.

Description, references and severity are taken verbatim from the Mozilla advisory. The attack vector is assumed to be "Remote" by default due to the nature of the Mozilla products. The type of the vulnerability is always set to "Unknown" and needs to be filled by hand by the user.

./trackertools extract nvd CVE...

extracts CVE entries from the official National Vulnerability Database. This is mostly included as an example for working with the JSON format. CVEs obtained from this source often require manual changes to the description and references before they can be used for the tracker.

Description and references are taken verbatim from the NVD CVE entry. Severity and attack vector are derived from the CVSS v3 if present (this usually takes a few day after the CVE has been published). The type of the vulnerability is always set to "Unknown" and needs to be filled by hand by the user.

./trackertools extract oracle URL...

extracts CVEs issued by Oracle, where URL is the URL of the verbose text form of an Oracle Critical Patch Update (CPU), e.g. https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuoct2021verbose.html.

The description is taken verbatim from the adivsory (and is therefore quite low quality because these texts are autogenerated). Severity and attack vector are derived from the CVSS v3. The URL of the advisory is used as a reference. The type of the vulnerability is always set to "Unknown" and needs to be filled in by hand by the user.

./trackertools extract webkitgtk URL...

extracts CVEs issued for WebKitGTK, where URL is the URL of a WebKitGTK advisory, e.g. https://webkitgtk.org/security/WSA-2021-0004.html.

The description is of the form "A security issue has been found in version. impact", where version and impact are extracted from the advisory. The URL of the advisory is used as a reference. The attack vector is assumed to be "Remote" by default as WebKitGTK is a browser engine. The type and severity of the vulnerability are always set to "Unknown" and need to be filled in by hand by the user.

./trackertools add INPUT

adds CVEs to the Arch Linux Security Tracker. It reads a JSON file generated by one of the extractors and tries to create a new CVE for each of the items found in there. The necessary login credentials can be supplied using the --username and --password options, the TRACKER_USERNAME and TRACKER_PASSWORD environment variables, or will otherwise be queried on the TTY.

Note that only adding new CVEs is supported at the moment. Trying to add an already existing CVE will try to merge the data according to the upstream tracker logic, which will only partially succeed if the data is conflicting.

The URL to the tracker is set as https://security.archlinux.org by default, but can be changed for debugging purposes by setting the --tracker-url option or TRACKER_URL environment variable, e.g. to a tracker instance running locally:

TRACKER_URL='http://127.0.0.32:5000' ./trackertools add

1. Download a set of CVEs using one of the extractors to a JSON file, e.g.

   ./trackertools extract mozilla --output=mfsa2021-01.json mfsa2021-01

2. Edit the file to check the generated data and add missing information like the vulnerability type:

   $EDITOR mfsa2021-01.json

3. Upload the CVEs to the tracker:

   ./trackertools add mfsa2021-01.json

Missing or incorrect information can be edited afterwards using the web interface of the tracker. Be careful, mass-editing messed up CVE entries has not been implemented yet...

./trackertools strip-markdown INPUT

takes a JSON list of CVEs and strips all markdown formatting from it, which can be useful if the upstream advisory makes use of it because the Arch Linux security tracker does not. The stripped version is written to stdout by default, but can be redirected to a file using the --output option.

• Implement more extractors
• Validation of the generated JSON files, at least in ./trackertools add
• Better error handling
• SSO support using Keycloak
• Batch editing of existing CVEs