Maybe we are talking about different attack scenarios? The vector I would like to protect against is that someone is able to inject false binaries in a caching nexus server (or over the network if https is not used).
The way I envision the trust to be established is: The developer goes either to maven central or the projects homepage and copies the <dependency> block needed to add the dependency to pom.xml. The dependency block includes information that can be used to cryptographically guarantee that the binary that ends up in the build is the same one that the original developer published. I think it would be possible to simplify the verification of gpg signatures and make it be possible to automate it in a resonable manner. best regards Alexander Kjäll 2016-12-05 18:29 GMT+01:00 Hervé BOUTEMY <herve.bout...@free.fr>: > I fear the proposed change would not improve security but lower it: > if the pom contains the reference to a key "to be used to sign the artifact", > anybody wanting to change the content will just change the key reference to a > value it owns > > yes, knowing which keys you should trust to sign which artifact is not easy, > but I fear there is no automagic way to automate trust > > What I'd want to do is to improve the dependencies report to show the key used > to sign the artifact: that would improve people knowledge of who they are > trusting: but that would not mean that they can trust them... > > Regards, > > Hervé > > Le lundi 5 décembre 2016, 09:31:20 CET Alexander Kjäll a écrit : >> Regarding verifying the gpg signature, as a contributor to the gpg >> verify plugin here: >> >> http://www.simplify4u.org/pgpverify-maven-plugin/index.html >> >> I have some thoughts on why the current infrastructure doesn't really >> help us to verify the signatures in practice: >> >> 1) Very hard to know what key are the correct one, as it's not specified >> anywhere in the pom, you need to contact the developer of the jar that >> you want to verify and ask them to publish what key they used to sign >> the project with. It would be nice to have a <signed-by> tag in the pom >> in order to resolve this. >> >> 2) Verifying the signature can't really be done with a maven plugin, as >> those are downloaded over the same channels that the jar's are >> downloaded over, and there is no method for maven to verify that it >> downloaded the correct plugin. >> >> I opened a bug about this problem a couple of years ago, but since it's >> not really possible to fix this without changing the structure of the >> pom i didn't even bother to write a patch for it. >> >> If there is a chance that a fix for this problem would be included, then >> I would be happy to try to write a patch for it. >> >> best regards >> Alexander Kjäll >> >> On 05. des. 2016 08:23, Hervé BOUTEMY wrote: >> > AFAIK, checksums are there only to avoid stupid download/upload >> > distorsion. >> > What gives real security is *signature* done by developers, ie .asc files, >> > that use other hash algorithms than these little .md5 and .sha1 files. >> > That's why we recommend to verify *the signature* [1]. >> > >> > Another topic: https://www.apache.org/dev/release-signing.html is not >> > about >> > Maven repository but is about Apache releases that are distributed as part >> > of Apache official (source) releases, distributed by Apache mirrors [2] >> > >> > AFAIK, security is taken seriously: checksums are just not really part of >> > that security, they are only checksums. >> > >> > Regards, >> > >> > Hervé >> > >> > [1] http://maven.apache.org/download.cgi >> > >> > [2] https://www.apache.org/mirrors/ >> > >> > Le lundi 5 décembre 2016, 00:56:22 CET John Patrick a écrit : >> >> Hiya, >> >> >> >> So currently checksum's are not generated by default... I've submitted >> >> a ticket which switched the install plugin to generate them by >> >> default. >> >> >> >> Next step stop using md5 which most have considered dead for several >> >> years, and checking apache >> >> (https://www.apache.org/dev/release-signing.html) sha512 should be >> >> being used. >> >> >> >> So either; >> >> 1) add support so md5, sha1, sha256 and sha512 are all generated >> >> 2) plugin defines which is generated >> >> 3) plugin defines a list which are generated >> >> 4) settings.xml defines which is generated >> >> 5) settings.xml defines a list which are generated? >> >> >> >> Thoughts??? >> >> >> >> Next; >> >> Currently when downloading we have ignore, warn or error if checksum's >> >> don't match. I propose adding a checksum min level options? i.e. allow >> >> MD5 > SHA1, SHA256 > SHA512 >> >> >> >> So; >> >> 1) Default to MD5 >> >> 2) Wait till all maven plugins deploy a sha512 to central >> >> 3) Switch default to SHA512 >> >> >> >> What are developers thoughts? >> >> What staged steps should this be merged as? >> >> >> >> I would like to start helping getting the core maven and all of it's >> >> dependencies more secure so people can start trusting maven is secure >> >> by default as I get the feeling isn't at the moment. >> >> >> >> Cheers, >> >> John >> >> >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org >> >> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org >> > >> > --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org >> > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org >> >> --------------------------------------------------------------------- >> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org >> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@maven.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@maven.apache.org
