411
Oh Snap! Canonical now doing manual reviews for new packages due to scam apps
(www.gamingonlinux.com)
this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
411 points (96.8% liked)
Linux
48363 readers
603 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
To save you some effort, they do not consider it a priority to fix. Code was attempted to merge that would make package signatures the default, but it was removed because it “was a waste of cpu cycles” when “md5 and the https was just as good”. I’m not kidding, you can find the whole conversation in the Debian mailing archives. So instead I’m going to make it known how dumb it is, and encourage people to use something else.
Oh my. That's extremely disappointing. I love the project but part of making software free and accessible is ensuring that trust is reasonable to place in it. I'll probably still see if I can get my head around dpkg enough to fork it to replace MD5 with an actually secure hashing algorithm and make signing mandatory. I've found what I think is the file specification already (my C is in need of exercising) and I've been waiting too long for my with to get back to me on contributing to open source projects so, this could be a good one.
Please do share the white paper when published. I'm looking forward to that.
I admire your gusto! I think it's doable, and you can definitely pull it off if you want to. To replace MD5 and implement signatures you need to do the following, as a high level overview:
Extend dpkg to know what SHA2 is, and reliably detect it. (maybe measure hash length or specifying a new version using the control file?)
dpkg must also know what a signature is. More on that below.
Providing automatic/mandatory signing will require code to handle PKI as well as a place to store the signing information. I would do it by signing the two archives found within Deb packages, then placing information about the signing in the top-level of the package. Existing tools need to be able to ignore or handle whatever you implement as a rule of thumb.
Note that this is just my approach and maybe you can do better.
I also recommended looking into https://lists.debian.org/debian-dpkg/2001/03/msg00024.html. This is the thread I mentioned earlier, in which package signatures were discussed and ultimately turned down. Maybe the easiest approach is to re-implement what the contributor was trying to do back then, but with modern code and standards? If you want more resources, including my presentation on the topic to HackCFL and CitrusSec, let me know. I am here for whatever technical assistance or industry contacts I can provide. The white paper might be done in a month, minus peer review. I'm very busy and so is he. Good luck in any case!