The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) has announced Siren, "a collaborative effort to aggregate and disseminate threat intelligence specific to open source projects". The initiative comes in the wake of the XZ Utils compromise where it became clear that open source projects needed better ways to disseminate and receive relevant threat intelligence. Like corporate threat intelligence platforms (TIPs), Siren will provide a place to share Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) and Indicators of Compromise (IoCs).
For OSS projects and maintainers that do not have access to corporate cyber threat intelligence tools, this fills an important gap in the OSS community. When there are threats and attacks affecting those underserved communities, they may have no ability to share this information in a way that gets to the well-known feeds.
In the early days of the xz/liblzma vulnerability, there was no central place for the OSS community to share IOCs and TTPs. The community shared their own observations in various isolated forums, but there was a lack of a central convening point. In this scenario, the proposed mailing list could have been used as a public community led forum in which to distribute information about the threat actors.
The blog post lists the key features of Siren as:
- Open Source Threat Intelligence (OSINT) shared with the community about actively exploited public vulnerabilities and threats.
- Real-Time Updates: List members receive notifications via email about emerging threats which may be relevant to their projects, enabling swift action to mitigate risks.
- TLP:CLEAR: To facilitate effective unrestricted transparent communication, the list follows the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP), Clear guidelines for the sharing and handling of intelligence.
- Community-driven: Contributors from diverse backgrounds collaborate to enrich the intelligence database, fostering a culture of shared responsibility and collective defense.
Siren is open to sign ups, and the OpenSSF is encouraging people to sign up, contribute and spread the word.