unofficial mirror of guix-devel@gnu.org 
 help / color / mirror / code / Atom feed
From: Efraim Flashner <efraim@flashner.co.il>
To: Vagrant Cascadian <vagrant@reproducible-builds.org>
Cc: Julien Lepiller <julien@lepiller.eu>,
	guix-devel@gnu.org, Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: maradns reproducibility fixes and the merits of picking a random number
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2022 12:30:26 +0300	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YrrKMjNsCuSmOgFZ@3900XT> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <87leth7ev6.fsf@contorta>

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3039 bytes --]

On Mon, Jun 27, 2022 at 06:31:41PM -0700, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> On 2022-06-22, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> > On 2022-06-08, Vagrant Cascadian wrote:
> >> On 2022-06-08, Efraim Flashner wrote:
> >>> On Tue, Jun 07, 2022 at 07:20:25AM +0200, Julien Lepiller wrote:
> >>>> On June 7, 2022 5:24:22 AM GMT+02:00, Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>> >On Mon, Jun 6, 2022 at 6:50 PM Vagrant Cascadian
> >>>> ><vagrant@reproducible-builds.org> wrote:
> >>> This is something we can work with. We can just mark the package as
> >>> '#:substitutable? #f' and then everyone will have to build it
> >>> themselves. It still won't really be reproducible, but everyone will
> >>> actually have their own special random number.
> >>
> >> This actually seems like the best approach in the short term! Leaving
> >> time to work out a better fix long-term, probably by working with
> >> upstream...
> >>
> >> Thoughts?
> >
> > Should I just push that part for the short-term workaround? Or does
> > someone else want to push that?
> >
> >
> >>>> >MaraDNS does not support DNSSEC so the program may not use entropy for
> >>>> >keys. Either way, I'd rather use an unreproducible build than,
> >>>> >accidentally, a known number series to encrypt secrets. Can one patch
> >>>> >out the constant entirely so it is no longer available?
> >>>> >
> >>>> >The upstream website says: "People like MaraDNS because it’s ...
> >>>> >remarkably secure." [1] Since many distributions have the same issue,
> >>>> >upstream could perhaps offer the patch as a build switch to enable a
> >>>> >build-time seed only when needed.
> >>>> 
> >>>> Sounds like the safest option. Maybe we could change the code that uses that number to naise an exception or abort?
> >>
> >> Yeah, seems worth taking this or similar ideas upstream...
> >
> > And, this was the best place I found to mention this issue upstream,
> > will see what kind of response I get:
> >
> >   https://github.com/samboy/MaraDNS/discussions/101#discussioncomment-3006487
> 
> Upstream appears to think it is mostly ok to actually embed a specific
> random prime... and not have it be different across all the builds, as
> the number is mixed with other randomness from /dev/urandom.
> 
> It is expensive to generate the random prime on some hardware, so doing
> so at runtime might not be feasible in some cases...
> 
> So, where do we go from here, knowing what we now know? :)
> 
> 
> live well,
>   vagrant

I looked back at the original email. I think we should not embed a
static random prime and mark it as non-substitutable. Then with that
flag add a note that it generates a prime during building and everyone
having a unique prime is more important to us than everyone having the
same reproducible prime.


-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   אפרים פלשנר
GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]

  reply	other threads:[~2022-06-28  9:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 27+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2022-06-07  1:49 maradns reproducibility fixes and the merits of picking a random number Vagrant Cascadian
2022-06-07  3:24 ` Felix Lechner
2022-06-07  5:20   ` Julien Lepiller
2022-06-07 12:11     ` Brian Cully via Development of GNU Guix and the GNU System distribution.
2022-06-08 11:48       ` Efraim Flashner
2022-06-08 14:09         ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2022-06-08 11:47     ` Efraim Flashner
2022-06-08 20:33       ` Vagrant Cascadian
2022-06-23  2:05         ` Vagrant Cascadian
2022-06-28  1:31           ` Vagrant Cascadian
2022-06-28  9:30             ` Efraim Flashner [this message]
2022-06-28 15:39               ` Jack Hill
2022-06-28 16:04               ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2022-06-28 16:18                 ` Gábor Boskovits
2022-06-28 16:33                   ` Vagrant Cascadian
2022-06-28 19:06                     ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2022-06-28 19:15                       ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2022-07-12  2:36                       ` Vagrant Cascadian
2022-07-12  2:41                         ` Vagrant Cascadian
2022-07-18 11:21                           ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-07-19 13:09                             ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2022-06-07 15:15 ` Ludovic Courtès
2022-06-08 19:28 ` Arun Isaac
2022-06-08 20:25   ` Vagrant Cascadian
2022-06-14 17:16     ` Philip McGrath
2022-06-08 19:43 ` Liliana Marie Prikler
2022-06-08 20:23   ` Vagrant Cascadian

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

  List information: https://guix.gnu.org/

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=YrrKMjNsCuSmOgFZ@3900XT \
    --to=efraim@flashner.co.il \
    --cc=felix.lechner@gmail.com \
    --cc=guix-devel@gnu.org \
    --cc=julien@lepiller.eu \
    --cc=vagrant@reproducible-builds.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox

	https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).