ARMS: A Vision for Actor Reputation Metric Systems in the Open-Source Software Supply Chain

Many critical information technology and cyber-physical systems rely on a supply chain of open-source software projects. OSS project maintainers often integrate contributions from external actors. While maintainers can assess the correctness of a change request, assessing a change request's cybersecurity implications is challenging. To help maintainers make this decision, we propose that the open-source ecosystem should incorporate Actor Reputation Metrics (ARMS). This capability would enable OSS maintainers to assess a prospective contributor's cybersecurity reputation. To support the future instantiation of ARMS, we identify seven generic security signals from industry standards; map concrete metrics from prior work and available security tools, describe study designs to refine and assess the utility of ARMS, and finally weigh its pros and cons.