Reflections on Trusting Trust

[Kris Kennaway]

On Tue, Nov 29, 2005 at 03:43:11PM -0800, Colin Percival wrote:
> Kris Kennaway wrote:
> > I'd be happy to work with someone who can implement a solution for the
> > package side.  The important thing to keep in mind is that packages
> > are built automatically on many distributed machines.  Any solution
> > for signing packages would therefore need to also be automated,
> > e.g. signing them automatically when the packages are pulled back from
> > the build client to server.
> 
> Even before you get to that point, you have to worry about making sure
> that the build clients are secure.  One possibility which worries me a
> great deal is that a trojan in the build code for a low-profile port
> (e.g., misc/my-port-which-nobody-else-uses) could allow an attacker to
> gain control of a build client (and then insert trojans into packages
> which are built there).

They're closed systems that I keep up-to-date with security fixes, but
yes, this is something that we do not defend against.  As you note,
it's not really practical to at the moment, so the best we can do is
just keep it in mind and look for other things to fix.

Kris
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