Gentoo Archives: gentoo-security

From: Peter Simons <simons@××××.to>
To: gentoo-security@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-security] Re: Is anybody else worried about this?
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2004 17:57:19
Message-Id: 87ekj5sfto.fsf@peti.cryp.to
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-security] Re: Re: Is anybody else worried about this? by Rui Covelo
1 Rui Covelo writes:
2
3 > what about having the public and private key changed
4 > periodicaly (developers come and go, keys should come and
5 > go too)
6
7 GPG keys can have a built-in expiry date. You create the key
8 with a life-time of, say 6 months. When that time is up, you
9 have to issue a new key. This approach limits the number of
10 revocation certificates you have to manage, and the
11 administrative overhead is neglectable. (Assuming you don't
12 create thousands and thousands of keys every week.)
13
14 The good thing about this is that it forces the users to
15 maintain their key-rings, because the keys will just stop
16 working when the deadline has passed. And, of course, it
17 doesn't stop you from issuing revocation certificates
18 nonetheless.
19
20
21 > and have the portage download automaticaly the public key
22 > and revokation certificates [...]
23
24 IMHO, the keys should be stored on the public key servers.
25 Gentoo may, of course, run its own mirror, but reusing
26 infrastructure that exists is a good thing.
27
28 I wouldn't want the software to fetch/update/revoke any keys
29 automatically, though. Assuming everything is properly
30 signed and authenticated, it shouldn't be a problem. But
31 automated key-ring management feels wrong to me.
32
33 Concerning the "TODO-list" I posted: There is another step I
34 forgot to mention. Verifying the hashes of the files that do
35 exist isn't quite enough, you also have to make sure that no
36 files exist which don't have a hash, so that attackers can't
37 add arbitrary files to the tree.
38
39 Peter
40
41
42 --
43 gentoo-security@g.o mailing list