Proposal: mandatory versioning metadata for modules

[David Jorm]

Hi All

I am currently working on a system for tracking JAR files that expose known security flaws, identifying them by checksums or metadata. In short, both of these mechanisms have shortcomings. Checksums of JAR files provide zero false positives, but have huge scope for false negatives. Whenever a JAR is re-compiled, bits in the JAR change and the checksum changes. Metadata is unreliable, as META-INF/MANIFEST.MF does not require the inclusion of title and version elements. A more detailed overview is available here [0]. To give an example of the problem I'm attempting to solve, Spring 2.5.6 exposes a remote code execution flaw. It is fixed in Spring 2.5.6.SEC01. I want to be able to distinguish between 2.5.6 and 2.5.6.SEC01 to identify whether a system is deploying the vulnerable JAR. I can't 
just use a checksum of the file, because if anyone recompiles it, bits change. I also can't rely on the MANIFEST.MF, because it may or may not include any version data; it may not even identify the title of the component as "Spring".

The Jigsaw project offers a great opportunity to solve this problem. However, I note in the documentation [1]:

"A /module/ is a collection of Java types (/i.e./, classes and interfaces) with a name, an optional version number, and a formal description of its relationships to other modules."

The problem here is "optional" version number. What I'm trying to achieve is mandatory minimal version metadata. What do people think about making version number a requirement for Jigsaw modules? Would that be feasible and if so would it be desirable?

Thanks
-- 
David Jorm / Red Hat Security Response Team

[0] http://www.slideshare.net/davidjorm/tracking-vulnerable-jars
[1] http://cr.openjdk.java.net/~mr/jigsaw/notes/jigsaw-big-picture-01