> On Sun, Feb 21, Gregory Maxwell wrote: > The Fedora 24 key inside it is not signed by any other key. ... > Authenticating keys is hard in general; but existing fedora users > should at least be able to trust-on-first-use chain from earlier keys > to later ones-- assuming the fedora keys are kept offline and not > compromised-- and the instructions should have them verify > accordingly. But this would require the keys being shipped are signed > with prior releases key (or some static key signing key), and existing > users being told to check for that.
While signing new keys with old release keys would certainly help to make the attacker's job harder, it doesn't solve the trust problem. The one thing people would have to check is the fingerprint. That in itself would be sufficient even if the new key is not being signed by another one. The current download gives a fingerprint for the new Fedora 24 key: Key fingerprint = 5048 BDBB A5E7 76E5 47B0 9CCC 73BD E983 81B4 6521 and this could as well be manipulated by the attacker who has access to the web server. Given that this fingerprint is actually correct, it would help if it was printed off-line in any publication authorized by Fedora. The use and distribution of the fingerprint to various places showing consistently the same information would make it near impossible to fake the key. If that had been done beforehand, all a new, ordinary user would have to do is to check this one fingerprint. So please can someone convince me that the key above is really the right one? If so, using this fingerprint anywhere would help to build the trust that is not there yet. > It would also be preferable if the > keys were distributed on a separate server on a different network, so > that https would protect users that didn't/couldn't verify the > authenticity of the downloaded keys. Using HTTPS does not at all verify that the information you get is correct, it assures you of the correct origin, if https actually works as advertised, which in many cases it doesn't, But Red Had could publish the Fedora fingerprint as well on their servers. -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org http://lists.fedoraproject.org/admin/lists/devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
