Basis Universal Textures - Khronos Ratification and <model-viewer> Support

In 2019, Google partnered with Binomial to open source the Basis Universal texture codec with the goal to make high-quality textures more efficient for network transmission and graphics processing unit (GPU) memory usage. The Basis Universal texture format is 6-8 times smaller than JPEG on the GPU, yet has similar storage size as JPEG—making it a great alternative to current GPU compression methods that are inefficient and don’t operate cross platform. The format is intended for a variety of use cases: games, virtual and augmented reality, maps, photos, small videos, and more.

Over the past year, several exciting developments have been made to make Basis Universal more useful. A new high-quality mode was introduced, allowing the codec to use the highest quality formats modern GPUs support, finally bringing the web up to modern GPU texture standards—with cross platform support. Additionally, the Basis encoder now has an option to build a WebAssembly version, allowing for innovative web applications to take advantage of outputting to the super-compressed format. Lastly, the Khronos Group has announced and ratified the Basis Universal texture extension to glTF format, allowing for compressed assets that can be shipped and displayed everywhere in a KTX 2.0 container. This will have profound impacts on how models are distributed via the web and advance applications like eCommerce, making it easy to take advantage of 3D content on any platform.

In addition to these new features, developers worldwide have been making it easier to take advantage of Basis Universal. <model-viewer> has just added support for glTF files with universal textures, making it as easy as two lines of JavaScript to have beautiful, interactive 3D models on your page and in the coming months, the <model-viewer> editor will add support for encoding to universal textures. Additionally, 3D engines like Three.js, Babylon.js, Godot, Archilogic, and Playcanvas have added support for Basis Universal, with more engine support coming. Basis Universal is already in applications many use every day.

We look forward to seeing Basis Universal adoption soar as it has never been easier to distribute 3D assets. Check out the code and demo on GitHub, let us know what you think, and how you plan to use it!

By Stephanie Hurlburt, Binomial and Jamieson Brettle, Chrome Media

A new resource for coordinated vulnerability disclosure in open source projects

One of the joys of open source is the freedom it gives you to create: contributors get to build the projects they want how they want; it’s up to them. Of course, blank slates don’t come with directions, which makes more niche areas of software development and management a challenge for contributors. Vulnerability disclosure is one of those areas.

Google doesn’t restrict its open source work to one team, instead we teach any and all Googlers about open source: how to release, how to contribute, how to use, and, in general, how to be a good open source citizen. This approach scales well, and gives people the knowledge to be lifelong open source community members. This includes sharing knowledge about open source security, a topic that isn’t new, but is finally getting the industry attention it deserves.

The intimidating blank slate and a lack of time for contributors to develop policies means many open source projects have no documented vulnerability reporting information, much less a plan for how to handle and disclose a reported vulnerability. We recently updated our guidance for coordinated vulnerability disclosure in open source projects that come out of Google and have published it in hopes that other projects will find this helpful for their project security practices.

The new guide has three sections:

• Setting up your vulnerability management “infrastructure”: The work you’ll want to do before an issue is reported.
• The vulnerability response process: Includes a runbook for when your project receives an issue.
• Templates: From SECURITY.MD to a public disclosure outline, all the communication pieces you need to handle an issue.

It’s a myth that if a project hasn’t received a vulnerability report yet, it doesn’t need a disclosure policy. It’s also a myth that you need to be “a security person” to implement a vulnerability disclosure policy. A successful coordinated vulnerability disclosure frequently comes down to good process management and clear, thoughtful communication. You don’t have to be an expert in operating systems capabilities to understand how a reporter manipulated it to cause an account privilege escalation through your project. A predetermined policy, some templates, and a well-executed runbook will take you through discovering, patching, and disclosing most kinds of vulnerabilities.

Vulnerability disclosure is part of Fix in the Know, Prevent, Fix framework we proposed recently for open source vulnerability management. In today’s industry, with all of our supply chain dependencies, improving open source project security in even one project can have a multiplying effect. Vulnerability disclosure is a key aspect of that overall security posture. Our hope is that projects will take this guide, remix and adapt to their projects, and share their changes with others so we can collectively increase our open source security.

By Anne Bertucio, Google Open Source

Updates on the Tsunami Security Scanning Engine

Several months ago, we open sourced the Tsunami security scanner: a false-positive-free infrastructure scanning engine focusing on high severity, actively exploited vulnerabilities. Today, we are releasing the first major update for Tsunami.

In the last few months, we have done a lot of work in the background to prepare Tsunami for the next step and focused on the following:

• Vulnerability research: In order to keep Tsunami's detection capabilities up-to-date, we kicked-off various projects to research the exploitation of vulnerabilities in the wild. We will soon publish more information about our initiatives in this space—stay tuned.

• New detection capabilities: Based on our research, we have added 15 new detector plugins to Tsunami for actively exploited vulnerabilities.

• Continuous Integration pipeline for our open-source builds: We set up a CI/CD pipeline that automatically mirrors and tests changes between our internal version management system and the open source repository. This will enable us to easily merge internal and external contributions.

• Test bed for end-to-end testing: This summer we hosted an intern (Yuxin Wu), who built and open-sourced a test bed for Tsunami. The test bed can automatically deploy arbitrary versions of off-the-shelf software based on docker images. We are using the test bed to automatically check whether a Tsunami detector is working for all vulnerable versions of a software and keeps functioning for future versions.

• Web application fingerprinting: We added Web application fingerprinting capabilities to Tsunami. Tsunami, now detects popular off-the-shelve Web applications. This information can be used by Tsunami for more precise and less intrusive vulnerability verification. Furthermore, it enables security teams to build a software inventory based on Tsunami scans. We'll keep working on refining our fingerprinting approach and extending our fingerprinting database.

Today, we are releasing the new detectors and the fingerprinting capabilities. You can find the new detectors and the web fingerprinter in our plugin repository.

If you are adopting Tsunami within your organization and if you have questions or would like to contribute, feel free to contact us at any time at [email protected].

By Guoli Ma, Claudio Criscione & Sebastian Lekies, Vulnerability Management Team