Incident response plan for Weblate

Scope and objectives

This IRP covers incidents impacting the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of Weblate-operated deployments.

Informacja

This plan is specifically designed for deployments operated by Weblate s.r.o. Other deployments need to adapt provider-specific and organizational steps to their own environment.

Roles and responsibilities

  • Incident Response Lead (IRL): Coordinates all phases of the response process.

  • System Administrator: Executes containment and recovery measures.

  • Security Officer: Evaluates security impact and regulatory consequences.

  • Data Protection Officer (DPO): Evaluates if personal data (PII) was compromised and manages mandatory GDPR notifications.

  • Communications Lead: Manages notifications to internal stakeholders and external parties if required.

Communication logistics

  • Internal Communication:

    • Primary channel is Signal for human-to-human coordination.

    • Technical alerts remain outside of Signal to avoid noise.

  • External Communication:

    • E-mail is used to reach customers.

    • Customer contact lists are maintained in several locations to ensure access during service outages.

  • Public Disclosure:

Incident categories and severity

Incident activation

  • Declare an incident when an event is confirmed or strongly suspected to affect the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of the service beyond routine operational noise.

  • The Security Officer declares the incident, assigns the initial severity, and appoints the Incident Response Lead (IRL).

  • If the Security Officer is unavailable, any available senior operator may declare the incident and hand over ownership as soon as practical.

  • Reclassify the incident if the scope or impact changes during investigation.

Incident categories

  • Category 1 – Unauthorized Access

  • Category 2 – Data Integrity Violation

  • Category 3 – Service Outage or Degradation

  • Category 4 – Misconfiguration or Deployment Error

Severity levels and SLAs

Istotność

Definition

Target Acknowledge

Target Initial Action

Critical

Total outage; Admin compromise; Active data breach; requires immediate containment.

< 30 Minutes

< 4 Hours

Wysoki

Core feature failure; PII leak of single user.

< 2 Hours

12 Hours

Średni

Performance degradation; Minor security issue.

1 Business Day

3 Business Days

Niski

UI bugs; Staging issues; Non-security errors.

Best Effort

Best Effort

Incident response lifecycle

Preparation

  • Ensure regular daily backups of the PostgreSQL database and the data directory using Weblate’s built-in backup with rotation, see Tworzenie kopii zapasowych i przenoszenie weblate.

  • Ensure Weblate uses a properly configured reverse proxy (e.g., NGINX) with HTTPS (TLS 1.2+).

  • Enable 2FA for all admin-level accounts.

  • Keep the Weblate instance and its dependencies (Python, Django, Celery, database, etc.) up to date.

  • Integrate with SIEM systems using the GELF protocol for audit and application log forwarding.

Identification

  • Monitor system and application logs (journalctl, reverse proxy logs, Weblate application and audit logs).

  • Analyze login events, webhook executions, and push/pull failures.

  • Configure alerting (via Prometheus, Zabbix, or SIEM) for multiple login failures, unexpected restarts, or irregular VCS actions.

Containment

  • Create an incident record with a case ID and record timeline updates as actions are taken.

  • Coordinate human response in Signal and keep technical alerting in the existing monitoring systems.

  • For Category 1 or 2 incidents, create a manual Hetzner Cloud Snapshot before taking disruptive action when it is safe to do so.

    • Name format: IRP-[CaseID]-[YYYYMMDD]-Evidence.

    • These are separate from standard rotating backups and must be preserved for analysis.

  • Isolate the affected host or service as needed (for example by firewall rules or service isolation).

  • Disable external integrations (Git/webhooks) if they are part of the attack vector.

  • Suspend affected user accounts immediately.

  • Revoke or rotate affected administrative, API, VCS, and webhook credentials as applicable.

  • Preserve relevant evidence, including system logs, reverse proxy logs, Weblate application and audit logs, affected configuration state, and the list of impacted credentials or integrations.

Eradication

  • Remove any unauthorized code or data.

  • Patch known vulnerabilities by upgrading Weblate or server components.

  • Validate binary and repository integrity using SHA-256 checksums or Git logs.

Recovery

  • Restore affected services or data from the latest known-good Weblate backups.

  • PII Assessment: DPO determines if the breach requires a 72-hour GDPR notification.

  • Reintroduce services in a phased approach.

  • Confirm the root cause has been removed or a compensating control is in place before restoring normal traffic.

  • Rotate affected credentials and verify integrity of the restored system, repositories, and configuration.

  • The Security Officer and IRL approve returning to normal operations.

  • Monitor logs and system behavior continuously for at least 72 hours post-recovery.

Post-incident review

  • Timeline: Hold a review meeting within 5 business days of incident closure.

  • Compile a full incident timeline and actions taken.

  • Perform Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and document it within 10 business days.

  • Update security policies and IRP documentation based on findings.

  • Review the effectiveness of detection and containment mechanisms.

  • Verify whether escalation, alerting, and external communication followed Vulnerability and incident handling as expected.