I was just browsing the Red Hat bug report for the mod_imap XSS issue (CVE-2005-3352). In it, they included a disclosure timeline (possibly from Apache, this is not clear). I've only seen a handful of disclosure timelines by a vendor. But in my opinion, it should be more widely adopted by those who want to assure their customers that they respond quickly to vulnerabilities. A vendor who responds quickly and effectively to security reports would want to "advertise" this fact, I would think. In this particular case, the timeline shows that the Apache Software Foundation was ready to coordinate on a release shortly after initial notification, but there were additional delays due to a coordination breakdown. Recently, large-scale comparative analyses on vulnerabilities have emphasized the publication-to-patch portion of the disclosure window. But the "known window of exposure" is actually notification-to-patch, which can be much longer. Most top researchers include timelines that would help provide this data, but it would be great to see more of this from vendors. - Steve P.S. In general, disclosure timelines can make interesting reading. They are highly informative about the twists and turns of the disclosure process.
