From: Carlo Zancanaro <carlo@zancanaro.id.au>
To: bo0od <bo0od@riseup.net>
Cc: 47634@debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#47634: Accompany .asc and .DIGESTS keys for the ISO
Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2021 12:27:32 +1000 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87y2dqlvqj.fsf@zancanaro.id.au> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5c01ac9b-74db-42d5-db39-7f287b70255d@riseup.net>
Hi bo0od!
On Sat, Apr 10 2021, bo0od wrote:
>> Which implies that the signatures are sufficient, right?
>
> Well this is simple question but the answer is sorta deeper, So
> i will answer with yes and no:
>
> yes signatures are sufficient but signatures with PGP has
> problems...
I grant that this might be true, but whether or not to use PGP is
a different issue to whether cryptographic signatures are
sufficient to verify downloads. If we compare the projects you've
shown as examples:
- Qubes provides hashes, PGP signatures, and a release signing
key
- Whonix provides hashes, PGP signatures, and a release signing
key
For verification purposes the hashes only provide transport
integrity - they don't provide any mechanism to verify where the
content came from, and because they're stored next to the images
it's likely that any attacker who could manipulate the images
could also manipulate the hashes. The signature provides a better
guarantee that the image contains what the project intends to
distribute (i.e. that nobody has compromised image itself). In
this instance, the hash provides no significant additional value
over the signature.
If we look at the Tor project (who, I hope you will agree, care
about security), their download page[1] only provides links to PGP
signatures as their sole method of verification.
I'm not convinced there's much value to add anything beyond the
signatures, and I think there is some cost. Having multiple
verification options makes the download page more confusing (by
providing more choices to do the same thing), and may make it less
likely that people do any verification.
I think there may be a larger conversation to have around using
something like Signify rather than PGP/GPG, but I'm not familiar
enough with Signify to have an opinion about that at the moment.
Carlo
[1]: https://www.torproject.org/download/
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-04-10 2:28 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 8+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-04-07 5:42 bug#47634: Accompany .asc and .DIGESTS keys for the ISO bo0od
2021-04-08 17:03 ` Leo Famulari
2021-04-08 17:34 ` bo0od
2021-04-08 22:57 ` Carlo Zancanaro
2021-04-09 22:17 ` bo0od
2021-04-10 2:27 ` Carlo Zancanaro [this message]
2021-04-10 21:24 ` bo0od
2021-04-18 10:40 ` Ludovic Courtès
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