On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 09:56:41PM +0000, Chris Gerhard wrote:
> On 14/01/2010 21:17, [email protected] wrote:
> >On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 08:40:20PM +0000, Chris Gerhard wrote:
> >>On 14/01/2010 19:54, [email protected] wrote:
> >>>On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 11:52:41AM +0000, Chris Gerhard wrote:
> >>>>My concern as someone who works in support is that this will
> >>>>generate fire drills and customer calls. The manual for pkg verify
> >>>>should sing out that it does not do always use the sha1 to do a full
> >>>>verification.
> >>>
> >>>Sorry, but documenting internal algorithms isn't appropriate.  We want
> >>>to reserve the right to change our hash algorithms and message digests
> >>>without breaking existing software.  Pkg verify is what you should use
> >>>to verify the integrity of files installed by the packaging system.  If
> >>>you choose not to use that tool, you're on your own.
> >>
> >>And that is the problem. If you use anything else it will lead the
> >>user down to the path of believing there is a problem when there is
> >>not one. That will result in customer dissatisfaction and calls.
> >>Unless we clearly document this behaviour or fix it.
> >
> >Customers don't get to build tools on private interfaces and expect
> >support.  As I said before, I'm open to building an interface in our
> >public API that security software can use to verify our files.  However,
> >if a system has been compromised, even manifest signing can be exploited
> >since we assume the intruder will have the ability to replace manifests
> >and the keys we use to verify them.
> 
> I'm not sure I understand your point. If a customer uses bart(1) to
> build check sums of a system and then uses that on another
> "identical" system they will think the systems are different. No
> need to involve the pkg system at all. Customer do this and will
> then call us if they have systems that are running the same release
> but the files are different.

What I'm suggesting, since we own bart(1), is that we have the ability
to teach bart(1) to use a pkg(5) API when looking at files.

We've talked about conditional publication and can eventually implement
it; however, that's probably not happening in the short term.  You've
already filed an RFE to have verify look at the entire hash of the file,
but I don't think that helps you in this case.

I don't have a problem with documenting that pkg verify should be used
to verify the integrity of files installed by the packaging system,
instead of some other tool.

-j
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