Hello! Here is my application for membership to the Ubuntu Security group. I have detailed below the information and contributions relevant to my application.
Team Membership
I am a member of the following teams:
- Ubuntu Security Apprentices: Member since 2025-01-06
- Canonical Security Team: Member since 2025-01-06
- Canonical: Member since 2025-01-06
Verified Identity
I am an employee of Canonical and a member of ~canonical-security, my identity has been verified through a background check during the onboarding process and in person.
History of high-quality sponsored security updates
I have researched, backported, tested, and published patches for security vulnerabilities for a variety of packages spread across the in-support releases. The following list and table show how the set of vulnerabilities covers the various upload environments:
- USN-7476-1: Package “python-scrapy”, 6 CVEs
- CVE-2024-3574
- CVE-2024-3572
- CVE-2024-1968
- CVE-2024-1892
- CVE-2022-0577
- CVE-2021-41125
- USN-7441-1: Package “mosquitto”, 2 CVEs
- CVE-2024-3935
- CVE-2024-10525
- USN-7309-1: Package “ruby-saml”, 3 CVEs
- CVE-2024-45409
- CVE-2017-11428
- CVE-2016-5697
- USN-7354-1: Package “djoser”, 1 CVE
- CVE-2024-21543
- USN-7617-1: Package “libtpms”, 1 CVE
- CVE-2025-49133
| Release | Main | Universe - Archive | Universe - ESM |
|---|---|---|---|
| questing (devel) | USN-7617-1 | ||
| plucky | USN-7617-1 | ||
| oracular | USN-7617-1 | USN-7354-1, USN-7309-1 | |
| noble | USN-7617-1 | USN-7354-1, USN-7309-1 | USN-7441-1, USN-7476-1 |
| jammy | USN-7617-1 | USN-7354-1, USN-7309-1, USN-7441-1 | USN-7476-1 |
| focal | USN-7309-1 | USN-7354-1, USN-7441-1, USN-7476-1 | |
| bionic | USN-7309-1, USN-7441-1, USN-7476-1 | ||
| xenial | USN-7309-1, USN-7441-1 | ||
| trusty | USN-7441-1 |
As of the day of posting, there have been no reports of any regressions related to my updates.
Continued, on-going security updates
As a member of the Security Engineering team at Canonical, I will continue to work on security updates regularly.
Demonstrated understanding of required tools and systems
While patching and publishing USN’s, I have become familiar with the Ubuntu CVE Tracker, the suite of scripts under the Ubuntu Security Tools, and the QA Regression Testing tool. I am additionally, as a part of the Main Inclusion Review process, completing a security review of the package PDFio on behalf of the security team, providing me with additional exposure to the uaudit tool.
Here is a sample of updates made to the Ubuntu CVE Tracker, including triage results, assignments, adding notes, and retiring CVEs:
As part of our testing process I have written tests to contribute to the QA Regression Testing repository, validating the vulnerability’s patch and ensuring no regressions are introduced by further updates.
I have also contributed to updates, bug fixes, and testing for various tooling as well as authored significant updates to internal documentation, details of which can be provided upon request.
Security Updates Troubleshooting:
- While patching the python-scrapy package using our tooling suite, I ran into multiple environment and tooling errors that all stemmed from a user’s username containing special characters. I was involved in identifying, troubleshooting, and testing the fixes for the various issues that arose. This included a bug in sbuild that has since been fixed via SRU. These issues required me to dive deeply into our build tools, testing tools, and the sbuild package itself as well as introduced me to the formal SRU process.
- While testing a batch of patches for the ruby-saml package, I encountered an issue where only the older versions of the package’s .deb contained and ran its test suite during the build process. To compensate for this, it was necessary to set up and manually run the unit tests on a patched version of the upstream source for each release where the unit tests were not present. This was done to confidently ensure that the changes necessary for the backports would not introduce any regressions.
- While patching the package python-scrapy, I ran into multiple issues that caused the package to fail to build from source. After searching through upstream’s history and the versions of the package available in debian, I was able to find and backport fixes for the FTBFS errors caused by outdated assert statements and dependency changes. Additionally, while investigating the FTBFS errors, I discovered and fixed incorrect syntax present in the debian/rules file that was causing failing autopkgtests.
Demonstrated responsive and respectful communication
I have signed the code of conduct. Additionally, I regularly monitor the Launchpad bugs for packages I have patched as well as keep track of the relevant mailing list announcements to check for possible regressions. Although no regressions or concerns have stemmed from my updates so far, I am an active member of our internal chat groups and have shown I am quick to respond to queries or provide needed troubleshooting, patching, and USN reviews.
Demonstrated understanding of the responsibility of ~ubuntu-security membership
I am following credentials best practices, my disk is fully encrypted, and I have 2FA enabled for all accounts.