On Sun, Jul 6, 2014 at 9:42 PM, Mark Mielke mark.mielke@gmail.com wrote:
If you don't believe security is possible... that's fine. Because perfect security is impossible. But, that doesn't mean people shouldn't try. CentOS *does* sign SRPM, do they not? Why do they do this? Obviously, somebody believes this aspect is important?
CentOS *produces* the SRPMs. They should sign them -- it verifies that this is the SRPM CentOS built, not something masquerading as such. It makes no guarantee as to the content or provenance of the sources, though, beyond the degree to which we already trust CentOS.
Signing the sources is an entirely different matter, since CentOS did not populate them and has no way to verify them independently of the upstream producer. We want a signed tag on the git repo in order to guarantee that these are the sources that upstream provided, not something masquerading as such. A signed tag from CentOS only certifies that these are the sources CentOS *thinks* upstream provided, which really truly is worth fuck-all because the chain of trust was broken by *upstream*.
It seems like some people just want to do what they're already doing (for
better or for worse) and it doesn't really matter what the request is, or the merit of the request. Which is fine... but just please admit to it.
To be clear, I'm not doing anything. I just like mailing lists with good SNR. If I was a CentOS core dev, I already would have written a script to push a cryptographically signed tag to every repo, which would be completely useless because, again, the chain of trust was broken by *upstream*.
Yes, the upstream vendor should be asked. That doesn't really add or remove merit to CentOS signing any tags that CentOS creates.
Actually, it does. If CentOS signs a known delta to an unknown (or at least unproven) base, that isn't actually valuable. I.e., only if upstream can be convinced to sign their tags would it be useful for CentOS to do the same. Until then, a signed tag from CentOS just tells us that someone trusted made a change to something untrusted, and the net result is still untrusted because -- say it with me this time -- the chain of trust was broken by *upstream*.
I'll warn you, though, since the specter of the all-powerful NSA was
raised: they already have Red Hat's signing keys. And yours, too.
They might... but it really sounds like you are saying that because it is possible for NSA to get past any security, therefore no security makes perfect sense. It sounds like extending your thinking would conclude that signing the SRPM is also useless. And for this... if you really do think this... I think you are quite wrong.
My only beef is with any security model that has to resort to magic (or the NSA, they're the same in this context) to explain the threat. Especially when that model proposes to close the barn door after the horse is already gone.