Hello everyone,
I am a research programmer at the NYU School of Engineering. My colleagues
(Trishank Kuppusamy and Justin Cappos) and I are requesting community
feedback on our proposal, "Surviving a Compromise of PyPI." The two-stage
proposal can be reviewed online at:
PEP 458
http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0458/
PEP 480
http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0480/
Summary of the Proposal:
"Surviving a Compromise of PyPI" proposes how the Python Package Index
(PyPI) can be amended to better protect end users from altered or malicious
packages, and to minimize the extent of PyPI compromises against affected
users. The proposed integration allows package managers such as pip to be
more secure against various types of security attacks on PyPI and defend
end users from attackers responding to package requests. Specifically,
these PEPs describe how PyPI processes should be adapted to generate and
incorporate repository metadata, which are signed text files that describe
the packages and metadata available on PyPI. Package managers request
(along with the packages) the metadata on PyPI to verify the authenticity
of packages before they are installed. The changes to PyPI and tools will
be minimal by leveraging a library, The Update Framework
<https://github.com/theupdateframework/tuf>, that generates and
transparently validates the relevant metadata.
The first stage of the proposal (PEP 458
<http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0458/>) uses a basic security model
that supports verification of PyPI packages signed with cryptographic keys
stored on PyPI, requires no action from developers and end users, and
protects against malicious CDNs and public mirrors. To support continuous
delivery of uploaded packages, PyPI administrators sign for uploaded
packages with an online key stored on PyPI infrastructure. This level of
security prevents packages from being accidentally or deliberately tampered
with by a mirror or a CDN because the mirror or CDN will not have any of
the keys required to sign for projects.
The second stage of the proposal (PEP 480
<http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0480/>) is an extension to the basic
security model (discussed in PEP 458) that supports end-to-end verification
of signed packages. End-to-end signing allows both PyPI and developers to
sign for the packages that are downloaded by end users. If the PyPI
infrastructure were to be compromised, attackers would be unable to serve
malicious versions of these packages without access to the project's
developer key. As in PEP 458, no additional action is required by end
users. However, PyPI administrators will need to periodically (perhaps
every few months) sign metadata with an offline key. PEP 480 also proposes
an easy-to-use key management solution for developers, how to interface
with a potential build farm on PyPI infrastructure, and discusses the
security benefits of end-to-end signing. The second stage of the proposal
simultaneously supports real-time project registration and developer
signatures, and when configured to maximize security on PyPI, less than 1%
of end users will be at risk even if an attacker controls PyPI and goes
undetected for a month.
We thank Nick Coghlan and Donald Stufft for their valuable contributions,
and Giovanni Bajo and Anatoly Techtonik for their feedback.
Thanks,
PEP 458 & 480 authors.
As a new Twine maintainer I've been running into questions like:
* Now that Warehouse doesn't use "register" anymore, can we deprecate it from distutils, setuptools, and twine? Are any other package indexes or upload tools using it? https://github.com/pypa/twine/issues/311
* It would be nice if Twine could depend on a package index providing an HTTP 201 response in response to a successful upload, and fail on 200 (a response some non-package-index servers will give to an arbitrary POST request).
I do not see specifications to guide me here, e.g., in the official guidance on hosting one's own package index https://packaging.python.org/guides/hosting-your-own-index/ . PEP 301 was long enough ago that it's due an update, and PEP 503 only concerns browsing and download, not upload.
I suggest that I write a PEP specifying an API for uploading to a Python package index. This PEP would partially supersede PEP 301 and would document the Warehouse reference implementation. I would write it in collaboration with the Warehouse maintainers who will develop the reference implementation per pypa/warehouse/issues/284 and maybe add a header referring to compliance with this new standard. And I would consult with the maintainers of packaging and distribution tools such as zest.releaser, flit, poetry, devpi, pypiserver, etc.
Per Nick Coghlan's formulation, my specific goal here would be close to:
> Documenting what the current upload API between twine & warehouse actually is, similar to the way PEP 503 focused on describing the status quo, without making any changes to it. That way, other servers (like devpi) and other upload clients have the info they need to help ensure interoperability.
Since Warehouse is trying to redo its various APIs in the next several months, I think it might be more useful to document and work with the new upload API, but I'm open to feedback on this.
After a little conversation here on distutils-sig, I believe my steps would be:
1. start a very early PEP draft with lots of To Be Determined blanks, submit as a PR to the python/peps repo, and share it with distutils-sig
2. ping maintainers of related tools
3. discuss with others at the packaging sprints https://wiki.python.org/psf/PackagingSprints next week
4. revise and get consensus, preferably mostly on this list
5. finalize PEP and get PEP accepted by BDFL-Delegate
6. coordinate with PyPA, maintainers of `distutils`, maintainers of packaging and distribution tools, and documentation maintainers to implement PEP compliance
Thoughts are welcome. I originally posted this at https://github.com/pypa/packaging-problems/issues/128 .
--
Sumana Harihareswara
Changeset Consulting
https://changeset.nyc
Work has started on the Open Technology Fund-supported project to improve Warehouse security, accessibility, and internationalization. More details in today's progress report:
https://discuss.python.org/t/pypi-security-work-multifactor-auth-progress-h…
best,
Sumana Harihareswara
Warehouse project manager
Changeset Consulting
PyPI and Test PyPI now support the creation of API Tokens for use when uploading projects to PyPI, thanks to work funded by the Open Technology Fund.
These tokens are created by default with the same upload permissions as the User creating them, but can also be scoped to specific projects that User has upload privileges for.
This is the first step in enforcing that Users with Two-Factor Authentication enabled must use an API Token when uploading to PyPI, rather than their password.
After the Beta we’ll announce the general availability of these features and timeline for enforcement of API Tokens for Two-Factor Authentication enabled accounts.
Read more on how you can help to test this feature at: https://discuss.python.org/t/pypi-security-work-multifactor-auth-progress-h…
-Ernest W. Durbin III
Director of Infrastructure
Python Software Foundation
Hello everyone!
On behalf of the PyPA, I am pleased to announce that pip 19.2 has just
been released.
The highlights of this release are:
- Python 3.4 support has been dropped
- Support for "yanked" files on package indexes (PEP 592)
- keyring can now be used for managing credentials
- A new `pip debug` command, for helping debug installations
- Many bug fixes and lots of minor improvements
We've also documented how Python 2 support in pip, would be maintained
going forward. [1]
To install pip 19.2, you can use get-pip (as described in [2]) or run:
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
Note that if you are using a version of pip supplied by your distribution
vendor, vendor-supplied upgrades will be available in due course.
The pip development team is extremely grateful to everyone in the community
for their contributions. Thanks to everyone who put so much effort into the
new release. Many of the contributions came from community members, whether
in the form of code, participation in design discussions and/or bug reports.
[1]: https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/development/release-process/#python-2-support
[2]: https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing
Hi friends!
I'm stepping away from several things in the Python community. I've served
as the maintainer of packaging.python.org and Twine for a while, but it's
time for me to move on.
I'm looking for someone to take on primary responsibility for
packaging.python.org and another person to help share the load for Twine.
If you or someone you know is interested, please reply to this thread and
let me know.
-Thea Flowers
magicalgirl(a)google.com
