[packagekit] This dialog sucks
Alexander Boström
abo at stacken.kth.se
Thu Apr 30 13:17:48 PDT 2009
Lurker opinions:
This dialog only protects against DNS spoofing and other MITM attacks
against web servers, and only partially so. It's too late to ask about
packager trust. That question was already implicitly answered when the
user clicked the yoyopak-release package at the yoyopak website and
installed it, probably without any signature verification.
So what to do:
1. If the key URL matches file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/* (or similar for
other backends) then don't ask at all. It's too late anyway, since
anyone who can create a yoyopak.repo file can also place a public key at
the right place. Maybe PK already does that?
2. If the key is from an https:// URL and the certificate verifies
correctly then also don't ask at all. Trust the .repo, someone with the
right access put it there already.
3. Else show the fingerprint (not just the key ID) and ask the user if
it matches the fingerprint provided by <name of repository>.
------------------------------------
A signature key with the fingerprint
XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
was found.
Is this a key provided by the
"yoyopak" software repository?
Yes/No
------------------------------------
Yeah, the last one sucks because it teaches users to always click yes
but there's no way around it unless a proper key infrastructure (PKI,
PGP WoT, DNSSEC etc.) is used. Most people won't see that dialog anyway
since any sane repo be handled at (1) or (2).
Also, if you don't like my (1) and (2) you can add a non-scary "info"
level dialog there:
------------------------------------
A signature key with the fingerprint
XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
was provided by "yoyopak" and will be
used to verify software integrity
during installation.
Ok/Cancel
------------------------------------
/abo
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