ChromeOS Security Severity Guidelines

This document provides the guidelines we use to assign a severity level to security issues and the Service Level Objectives for fixing vulnerabilities.

ChromeOS Security Model

ChromeOS is a hardened operating system intended to run as part of a complete and vertically integrated hardware/software stack such as Chromebooks,Chromeboxes, etc. When ChromeOS is booted in verified mode on a supported production device, ChromeOS is not a general purpose operating system.

Specifically:

• No untrusted native code execution on ChromeOS.
  • The ChromeOS image booted in verified mode is considered trusted code, i.e., code we build and release.
  • We rely on a number of different sandboxing technologies including seccomp, virtual machines, containers, etc. as well as other hardening approaches to isolate untrusted code from the trusted compute base.
  • In a default configuration, any third party applications must originate from a trusted source such as the Playstore (and are run in one of the native VM-based run-times).
• Single trusted user active on the device.
  • Only one person can be active on a ChromeOS device (the user may have multiple profiles)
  • The active user is considered trusted in terms of their own data. However a ChromeOS device can be potentially shared by adversarial users, including the device user and the device owner. Additionally a device may be used to access DRM content not owned by the device user.
  • We guarantee user isolation and protection of all user data even when a device user is not active on the device.
• No persistent compromise
  • ChromeOS is designed to be resilient to attacks and we guarantee that users can get back to a known good state via reboot or a recovery.
  • Device recovery ensures the device is restored to factory default state.

Vulnerabilities v. Security Bugs

A security vulnerability is a bug that can be exploited by an attacker to impact the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of a system.

A security bug is a bug that crosses a security boundary. The following are examples of boundaries we consider critical:

• Verified boot (code execution that persists across reboot)
• User isolation (privileged code execution that survives sign out but not necessarily reboot). One user being able to exploit another user or access the encrypted data at rest of another user (e.g. crbug.com/764540)
• Native code execution via a remote vector
• Kernel code execution via a remote vector
• A lock screen bypass (or anything an attacker can do short of opening the case) from the lock screen

If an attacker cannot directly exploit the bug on ChromeOS or if there’s no direct security impact to triggering the bug, we would not consider the bug to be a vulnerability.

However security bugs may be used as part of an exploit chain. We will consider any security bug that is reported as part of an exploit chain to be a vulnerability, though the severity of each bug in the chain may differ.

Security bugs are in scope for our Vulnerability Rewards Program but will be rewarded at the Panel’s discretion. Security bugs will have type bug rather than vulnerability in our Issue Tracker.

Social Engineering and User Interaction

Security vulnerabilities may be triggered by user interaction. However, an attacker has to be able to control the user interaction. If the attacker must rely on social engineering to get a user to perform a certain action that the user would not otherwise perform, we don't consider that a vulnerability.

Social engineering attacks are out of scope for our Vulnerability Rewards Program.

Developer Mode

ChromeOS can be run as a general purpose OS when Developer mode is configured. Any vulnerability that can only be exploited in Developer mode would be considered a security bug rather than a vulnerability.

Abuse Related Methodologies

Abuse related methodologies are not security vulnerabilities. Examples of abuse related methodologies might involve bypass of enterprise policies on managed devices, unauthorized access to special offers, etc.

Abuse related methodologies can be reported via the ChromeOS Vulnerability Rewards Program but reward will be at the discretion of the VRP Panel.

Managed Devices

Although we consider device users as trusted, we acknowledge managed device users may try to unenroll their devices or potentially exfiltrate provisioned enterprise secrets such as user or device certificates.

If a user is able to unenroll a managed device or exfiltrate secrets or other confidential device data, we consider that a vulnerability.

ChromeOS Flex

ChromeOS Flex is a version of ChromeOS intended to run on select supported third party hardware platforms. Since we do not control the security of the hardware/firmware layers on these devices, we cannot provide the same security guarantees that we do on Chromebooks.

ChromeOS Flex devices rely on the standard Linux UEFI Secure Boot flow and do not have a Google Security Chip, the lynchpin of coreboot verified boot on Chromebooks.

Third party hardware/firmware vulnerabilities impacting ChromeOS Flex can be reported through our VRP and will be treated like any other vulnerability in a third party component.

Third Party/Dependent Software Components

Since we are not a general purpose OS, many vulnerabilities in software components we ship (including the Chrome browser and Android OS) cannot be exploited on ChromeOS, or may not have the same severity level.

Unless a vulnerability in a third party component or dependency can be exploited on ChromeOS in a default verified boot configuration, we consider these issues to be security bugs rather than vulnerabilities if they are present in code we ship.

We routinely update third party packages to ensure defense-in-depth.

Toolchain and Code Hardening

We compile with clang and take advantage of compiler hardening options such as FORTIFY_SOURCE. We also use MiraclePtr and other techniques to harden code. Many of these techniques will result in a crash that prevents an attacker from exploiting a bug. We do not consider bugs that are mitigated via these techniques to be security bugs.

Crashes and denial of service bugs

We don't consider bugs that result in a process crash, system crash or more broadly denial of service attacks that can be restored with a reboot to be vulnerabilities. ChromeOS was designed with this in mind and offers extremely fast reboots and restores state such as browser tabs.

See the Chromium Security FAQ for more information on denial of service bugs in Chrome.

Fuzzers

Fuzzer found bugs are not considered security bugs unless they are demonstrated to be vulnerabilities e.g. attacker reachable and controllable.

Graphics Stack

The GPU is not directly exposed to untrusted code on ChromeOS in verified boot mode. All code that runs on the GPU is validated/sanitized or originates from a native process. A bug that allows untrusted code to run natively on the GPU would be considered a vulnerability.

In the case of graphics virtualization, the Vulkan or Venus renderer process is a sandboxed process designed to be an extension of the guest process it serves. If an attacker is able to compromise the guestOS and trigger a security bug (e.g. UAF, buffer overrun, etc) in the renderer (e.g. via UAF, buffer overrun, etc), the attacker may be able to leak data from their own process. However, since we consider the process within the guest boundary we would not consider this a vulnerability. These issues may still be considered security bugs since they may represent a step in an exploit chain that results in code execution.

Exploit Chains and Device Takeover

An exploit chain is composed of one or more vulnerabilities and security bugs that allow an attacker to achieve a security impact. Device takeover refers to persistent root access on a machine, even in guest mode (crbug.com/766253).

An exploit chain is considered mitigated, when one of the issues in the chain is mitigated such that it breaks the chain.

Security Severity Levels

ChromeOS severity guidelines are aligned with Google wide severity guidelines.

• Critical Severity
• High Severity
• Medium Severity
• Low Severity
• Service Level Objectives

Critical Severity (S0)

If the vulnerability were exploited, damage could be substantial.

Vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to achieve persistent arbitrary code execution on the device or exfiltrate unencrypted user data in verified boot is rated as Critical severity.

High Severity (S1)

If the vulnerability were exploited, damage could be considerable.

Vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to take control over a sandboxed process are rated as High severity.

Medium Severity (S2)

If the vulnerability were exploited, damage would be limited.

Medium severity vulnerabilities allow attackers to read or modify limited amounts of information, or security bugs that are potentially more harmful as part of an exploit chain.

Low Severity (S3)

We track these issues as bugs rather than vulnerabilities.

No Security Impact (NSI)

Some bugs are commonly reported as security bugs but are not actually considered security relevant on ChromeOS. These may be closed as “Won’t Fix”.

Service Level Objectives

A Service Level Objective (SLO) is a definition of the desired performance of a service or process for a single metric. In this case, the process is the fixing of security issues in ChromeOS.

Disclosure Timelines

All issues reported to the ChromeOS Vulnerability Rewards Program will be made public per specified timelines.