Skip to content

Making (sub-sub-)section structured information more visible #1465

@eskultety

Description

@eskultety

A couple of observations that would have helped me a lot when reading the RC where I accidentally ended up making wrong conclusions initially after the first read.

  1. Making structured information more visible

    Summary: The final revision was reviewed by all relevant experts prior to submission.
    Intended for: The highest-of-high-security-posture repos.
    Benefits: Provides the maximum chance for experts to spot and reject problems before they ship.

    I think Italic should be used ^^^^here for the optical separation of the structuring elements AND the actual informative contents, IOW this should be consistent with e.g.:
    <details><summary>Copy a reviewed change to another context<span>(Source L4)</span></summary>
    *Threat:* Get a change reviewed in one context and then transfer it to a
    different context.
    *Mitigation:* Approvals are context-specific.
    *Example:* MyPackage's source repository requires two-person review. Adversary

  2. Making heading level 5 more visible

    ##### Informed Review

    ##### Use only rebase operations on the protected branch

    When you look at how ^these render in https://slsa.dev/spec/v1.2-rc1/source-requirements#mitigations the heading font ends up being smaller and less contrasted than the rest of the content. I know this is a common markdown problem, but in the past I just used plain "bold" and a bit of manual formatting in other projects once I reached level 5 headings. The reason I'm even mentioning ^this is because when I read through the whole source track and got to the Every revision reachable from a branch was approved section, I didn't notice the logical separation under mitigations and instead drew the wrong conclusion that the only way of mitigating this "theoretical-rather-than-practical" attack you're offering (despite mentioning thorough reviews) is by using squash merges which is a practice I find questionable in general and even in context of mitigating the problem at hand vs the practical real life consequences on SW maintenance and so I initially prepared a few paragraphs to disagree AND only after like a 3rd read and having gone to the actual markdown source I noticed the heading separation and so I ended up discarding my whole comment because now that I know this I can read it as either/or, but ultimately your choice, the spec isn't opinionated which I completely agree with, it should be each project's decision how to assess this problem and hence the choice to ensure long term maintainability and sustainability.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    Status

    🆕 New

    Status

    No status

    Status

    No status

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions