Re: Security in the emacs package ecosystem

[Ihor Radchenko]

Stefan Kangas <stefankangas@gmail.com> writes:

> I think we should add some flag to the build system saying that a
> package should only be released if the new tag has a valid signature.
> This would have to be optional for now.  (It is of course already best
> practice to always sign your tags regardless.)

This is a good measure and will certainly improve security.

Another consideration is that package recipes can be directly edited by
anyone. If an account of a person with write access to, for example,
ELPA is compromised, ELPA recipes can be arbitrarily manipulated for all
ELPA packages. This includes re-targeting the source repo or simply
disabling the signature verification.

I am raising this because a breach of a package repo means a significant
probability of leaked ssh keys. The same ssh keys can be used to access
ELPA then.

> GNU ELPA and NonGNU ELPA does sign packages, see for example:
>
>     https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/company-0.9.13.tar
>     https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/company-0.9.13.tar.sig
>
> For some reason, the signature file is not linked from the web
> interface.  I think we should add such a link.

I opened a bug report to create an actionable item on this.
https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=61569

> If I'm not mistaken, MELPA unfortunately does not sign packages.

Looking at 43.4 Creating and Maintaining Package Archives, signing is
actually recommended. WRT MELPA we can do the following:
1. Open an issue
2. Allow users to demand package.el to verify signatures when
   downloading packages. Interested users can then increase their
   security by rejecting packages without .sig file.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
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