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0 pointscharcircuit5d ago0 comments

The whole point of a signature is that you are able to verify what was signed was in fact a message that was signed by signer.

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5 comments · 1 top-level

robinsonb55d ago· 4 in thread

Sure, but a signature doesn't prove that a particular binary came from a particular codebase - merely that a particular human (or other trusted entity, for varying degrees of "trusted") has vouched for it.

Being able to reproduce the binary from the source code and being able to verify that it's the same as the original is quite important in some contexts.

charcircuitOP5d ago

>Being able to reproduce the binary from the source code and being able to verify that it's the same as the original is quite important in some contexts.

I disagree. The contexts that people come up with are purely theoretical, and are not practically important. Please do try and convince me otherwise by sharing such a context. From my view the juice of trying to accomplish this is no where worth the squeeze.

harrouet5d ago

You disagree but you're wrong.

Military context: a government would want to review the code and compile themselves. Provide a hash of the target binary to ensure they've compiled it correctly.

SDLC: provide auditors with _proof_ that the tested binary is indeed coming from the audited code

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skydhash5d ago

> Being able to reproduce the binary from the source code and being able to verify that it's the same as the original is quite important in some contexts

Why not build your own binaries and be done with that. If you don’t trust the compiler or the machine doing the build, just build the code yourself.

robinsonb55d ago

Sure, I can do that, but there's some value in being able to check quickly and easily that, for example, the xz utils binaries shipped by a major distro actually match the published source.

Also useful for checking that a binary containing GPLed code does actually correspond to its published source.

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