Steve,
Regarding elevated permissions and apt/dpkg my limited understanding is a bad actor could modify an install script executed by apt/dpkg under the authority of root to do most anything including creating accounts, modifying/installing configuration/data/application files, install/start services, ... One way of lowering the chance this will happen is to use a trusted repository - like DEBIAN. But the reality is YouTubers far and wide push the idea that you should just choose a distro you're comfortable with. I think there are over 600 distros out there and I'm sure many have their own repositories. How many of those distros and repositories are under the same level of scrutiny as Debian? That is the reason I've chosen to trust Debain as a replacement for Windows.
Even with this trust we must realize life can go sideways for developers that have created and maintained FOSS for over a decade. We can hope that someone finds a future, or currently undiscovered, XZ-like issue like MS developer Andres Freund but this seems inadequate given the billions that corps like MS/AMAZON/GOOGLE/REDHAT/Akamai generate using Linux. For their own benefit I would hope these corps are analyzing Linux components for threats. I have no idea if there are formalized procedures for pushing corp discoveries back to organizations like Debian but if not, these procedures should be in place.
I'm totally on board with stable versions. I'm even OK with slowing down the distribution of stable versions. For instance. Makes total sense to improve distro compatibility and backport security fixes. But I would love to see developer signed packages with a Linux equivalent to MS Authenticode. If not that, how about a SHA-256 for each distro/package combination the developer has approved on their site or GitHub. If it does not exist an apt/dpkg feature to download a package, all of the dependencies, a file with SHA-256 hashes for each package, and the install script to the current directory and an apt/dpkg feature to run the install script would be outstanding.
Regarding elevated permissions and apt/dpkg my limited understanding is a bad actor could modify an install script executed by apt/dpkg under the authority of root to do most anything including creating accounts, modifying/installing configuration/data/application files, install/start services, ... One way of lowering the chance this will happen is to use a trusted repository - like DEBIAN. But the reality is YouTubers far and wide push the idea that you should just choose a distro you're comfortable with. I think there are over 600 distros out there and I'm sure many have their own repositories. How many of those distros and repositories are under the same level of scrutiny as Debian? That is the reason I've chosen to trust Debain as a replacement for Windows.
Even with this trust we must realize life can go sideways for developers that have created and maintained FOSS for over a decade. We can hope that someone finds a future, or currently undiscovered, XZ-like issue like MS developer Andres Freund but this seems inadequate given the billions that corps like MS/AMAZON/GOOGLE/REDHAT/Akamai generate using Linux. For their own benefit I would hope these corps are analyzing Linux components for threats. I have no idea if there are formalized procedures for pushing corp discoveries back to organizations like Debian but if not, these procedures should be in place.
I'm totally on board with stable versions. I'm even OK with slowing down the distribution of stable versions. For instance. Makes total sense to improve distro compatibility and backport security fixes. But I would love to see developer signed packages with a Linux equivalent to MS Authenticode. If not that, how about a SHA-256 for each distro/package combination the developer has approved on their site or GitHub. If it does not exist an apt/dpkg feature to download a package, all of the dependencies, a file with SHA-256 hashes for each package, and the install script to the current directory and an apt/dpkg feature to run the install script would be outstanding.
Statistics: Posted by CloisteredNeuron — 2024-05-29 03:07 — Replies 17 — Views 278