scientific-python
Add SPEC 11 on vulnerability disclosure
This PR introduces a new SPEC focused on responding to security incidents and disclosure of vulnerabilities.
The SPEC outlines creating a Security Response Team (SRT) and how this team can react to security incidents, notify affected projects, manage the fixing of the security issues and disclose the vulnerability and the releases that contain the fix, following responsible disclosure methods. The SRT also handles vulnerabilities under embargo (using the Traffic Lights Protocol (TLP)).
There have been ongoing conversations in the community, particularly at the Developer Summit 2024 and Developer Summit 2025 (see https://github.com/scientific-python/summit-2025/issues/8) about improving how we handle vulnerability disclosure
Due to the complexity of the broader disclosure process, we decided to split the work into two separate SPECs:
- Security Policy (#390 from @juanis2112 )
- Vulnerability Disclosure Process (this PR)
This SPEC will hopefully encourage all projects in the ecosystem to follow similar standards. The SRT can be a team across all projects, or just some of the projects, and each project can also select a single team to handle vulnerabilities for that specific project.
I used SPEC 11 name as that was selected from the last year, but I am happy to switch to a different number if needed.
This is to be paired with #390 and currently a draft.
