On 24/09/2026 14:56, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
Recently QEMU has received a denial of service attack on
its bug tracker in the form of 120 reports in 10 minutes,
and now repeated by another reporter in the form of 50
reports in the same day.
Prior to switching security disclosures to the bug tracker,
single reporters have submited 18, 22, and 114 bug reports.
submitted
None of this is sustainable. It is an effective denial of
service attack on the project maintainers' time. Every bug
report is a TODO item added to someone's workload.
It is time to put hard limits on how many bugs, discovered
with assitance of automated tools, we are willing to accept
assistance
in a givenm time frame.
given
This patch proposal suggests
* No more than 5 bugs per week, per reporter
* No more than 10 bugs are permitted to be open at any
time, per reporter.
This is explicitly scoped to bugs discovered with the assistance
of automated tools. Bugs where a human puts in exclusively
personal time / effort to discover a problem are not limited.
Signed-off-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <[email protected]>
---
contribute/report-a-bug.md | 37 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 37 insertions(+)
diff --git a/contribute/report-a-bug.md b/contribute/report-a-bug.md
index b506f9f..8fb7b0b 100644
--- a/contribute/report-a-bug.md
+++ b/contribute/report-a-bug.md
@@ -32,6 +32,43 @@ on GitLab, taking into account the following guidance.
triage of their output to validate all findings and reproducer
scenarios prior to submitting a bug report.
+* QEMU policy forbids the bulk filing of large numbers of
+ bug disclosures that were generated with automated tools
+ (AI/LLM, static analysis, fuzers). Such actions are not
+ a benefit to the project, placing an unsustainable burden
+ on maintainers.
+
+ * **No more than 5 bug/security reports, discovered
+ with assistance of automated tools, are permitted
+ to be filed per week, per reporter.**
+ * **No more than 10 bug/security reports, discovered
+ with assistance of automated tools are permitted
+ to be open at any time, per reporter.**
+ * Reporters must refrain from filing any reports
+ that would cause these thresholds to be exceeded
+ without first obtaining explicit prior permission
+ from project maintainers.
+ * Reporters are **required** to respond to triage
+ comments from maintainers on bugs related to
+ automated tools on a timely basis.
+ * If at any time, the project maintainers request
+ the reporter to stop filing bug reports discovered
+ with assistance of automated tools, this must be
+ honoured.
+
+ Ignoring any of the above rules may lead to the bugs being
+ mass closed without further triage, even if valid reports.
+ In cases where the filing limits are grossly exceeded,
+ the reporter's GitLab account may be reported for abuse
+ (spam), potentially leading to termination.
Do we know if people are doing this purely for the recognition? Perhaps
we could suggest that if these rules are broken, all bug reports
submitted by the reporter will remain private (to reporters) on GitLab:
if a maintainer decides to fix a reported bug at their discretion, the
original reporter will not be credited in the commit message.
+ If intending to file large numbers of bug disclosures
+ in aggregate, reporters are expected to invest their
+ time in writing patches, providing the patches for
+ review, and then further responding to feedback and
+ iterating on the patches until a maintainer accepts
+ them for it.
+
* Reproduce the problem directly with a QEMU command-line. Avoid
frontends and management stacks, to ensure that the bug is in
QEMU itself and not in a frontend and make it easier for
ATB,
Mark.
