[Distutils] Removing wheel signing features from the wheel library

[Wes Turner]

On Thursday, March 22, 2018, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:

> The feature was a building block that was intended to be used in much the
> same way that SHA package hashes are used, providing similar security to
> the ssh-style TOFU model, but less security than other imaginable public
> key systems. The idea was that it could provide more security in practice
> because the signatures could exist and be present with the archive, unlike
> gpg which provides loads of security in theory only. Unfortunately wheel
> signatures were never built up. I don't think anyone was tricked into
> believing the primitive provided security on its own.
>

The hashes serve as file integrity check but provide no assurance that they
are what the author intended to distribute because there is no
cryptographic signature.

File hashes help detect bit flips -- due to solar flares -- in storage or
transit, but do not mitigate against malicious package modification to
packages in storage or transit.

AFAIU, TUF (The Update Framework) has a mechanism for limiting which
signing keys are valid for which package? Are pre-shared keys then still
necessary, or do we then rely on a PKI where one compromised CA cert can
then forge any other cert?

https://theupdateframework.github.io/


>
> On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 2:21 PM Nathaniel Smith <njs at pobox.com>ared wrote:
>
>> Even if no maintenance were required, it's still a feature that promises
>> to provide security but doesn't. This kind of feature has negative value.
>>
>> I'd also suggest adding a small note to the PEP documenting that the
>> signing feature didn't work out, and maybe linking to Donald's package
>> signing blog post. I know updating PEPs isn't the most common thing, but
>> it's the main documentation of the wheel format and it'll save confusion
>> later.
>>
>> On Mar 22, 2018 10:57 AM, "Wes Turner" <wes.turner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> What maintenance is required?
>>>
>>> Here's a link to the previous discussion of this issue:
>>>
>>> "Remove or deprecate wheel-signing features"
>>> https://github.com/pypa/wheel/issues/196
>>>
>>> What has changed? There is still no method for specifying a keyring;
>>> whereas with GPG, all keys in the ring are trusted.
>>>
>>> On Thursday, March 22, 2018, Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 22 March 2018 at 22:35, <alex.gronholm at nextday.fi> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I am not changing the format of RECORD, I'm simply removing the
>>>>> cryptographic signing and verifying functionality, just the way you
>>>>> described. Hash checking will stay. As we agreed earlier, those
>>>>> features could be deprecated or removed from the PEP entirely.
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Cool, that's what I thought you meant, but I figured I should double
>>>> check since our discussion was a while ago now :)
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Nick.
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Nick Coghlan   |   ncoghlan at gmail.com   |   Brisbane, Australia
>>>>
>>>
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>
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