Re: HTTPS trust anchors in sysinst

On 2023-08-26 15:21, Mouse wrote:
>> [*] We should _also_ bake a public signature verification key into
>>      the installers that can verify a signature on the sets which can
>>      in turn be made only by TNF -- not by any of the public HTTPS
>>      CAs.  But that's a separate issue that requires more key
>>      management and software verifier setup than we have settled now.
> 
> Once you have that, it seems to me that the use of SSL on either HTTP
> or FTP becomes pointless CPU cycle wasting.  This then leads me to
> wonder two things: (1) is doing SSL a case of the good being the enemy
> of the best (because people will fall into the trap of thinking that
> SSL means "it's secure" without asking "...against what?"[%])? and (2)
> is all this kerfuffle about CA trust anchors effort that would better
> be put into designing and building the right answer?

Even worse - we are then getting into territory where old releases might 
accept bad certificates, since they use SSL and have trust anchors and 
so on. But once those get compromised, these old releases/installers are 
suddenly not safe anymore. And what about time limits on certificates, 
and what happens if you try to use these installers later? Will they 
fail, give warnings, or just accept that potentially invalid 
certificates are still being used? With all the trust that gets inferred 
by this? And if we accept potentially bad certificates in the first 
place, what is the point of all this?

Seems more like we are trying to shoot ourself in the foot with well 
intentions but possibly bad results here.

> Also, if you're doing public-key crypto - for anything - in the
> installers, this will drastically, I am tempted to say
> catastrophically, slow down installation on low-end machines, like a
> MicroVAX-II or Sun-3.  (Of course, NetBSD might be fine with that.  I
> just think it should be at least thought about.)

It will be worse than horrible...

   Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: [email protected]             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol