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
Hi,
We are testing team working on Smart Metering Implementation Programme and use pySerial 2.7. Our IT team is preparing an OS build with all the required tools in it. To silently install the tool they them in MSI. I was wondering if you have this in MSI format and can share it with us?
Looking forward to your reply.
Regards
Saqib Rashid
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Channelling the experts for advice on travis. After being absent for a couple of weeks my travis builds have started failing
The problem is seems to be related to this message in the failing builds
> 3.5 is not installed; attempting download
this is later followed by
> Downloading archive: https://storage.googleapis.com/travis-ci-language-archives/python/binaries/…
> 0.48s$ curl -sSf -o python-3.5.tar.bz2 ${archive_url}
> 13.65s$ sudo tar xjf python-3.5.tar.bz2 --directory /
my base python in .travis.yml is
> python: 3.5
and in the matrix I have this
> matrix:
> exclude:
> # Exclude the default Python 3.5 build
> - python: 3.5
> include:
> - os: linux
> env:
> - UNICODE_WIDTH=16
> - MB_PYTHON_VERSION=2.7
> - os: linux
> env: ........
...............
I see no pattern in which are failing and which succeed
--
Robin Becker
Greetings!
my organization uses Python across it's departments but the recent versions
of Python do NOT have an MSI download. We use SCCM for deployment of
software and because the downloads are all .exe based, the program is no
longer in compliance with my organization's security policies. I've looked
and I've looked but I cannot find an MSI for this program.
IT Guy.
Python Software Foundation has published a Request for Information
seeking software developers to add these features to Warehouse (PyPI):
* Verifiable cryptographic signing of artifacts (PEP 458/TUF or simiilar)
* Technical infrastructure and methods for automated detection of
malicious package uploads
More info:
https://github.com/python/request-for/blob/master/2019-Q4-PyPI/RFI.md
We'd like for potential contractors & other experts to keep discussion
at the Discourse forum
https://discuss.python.org/c/python-software-foundation/pypi-q4-rfi ,
especially on these questions:
• What methods should we implement to detect malicious content?
https://discuss.python.org/t/what-methods-should-we-implement-to-detect-mal…
and
* PEPs 458 and 480 offer different levels of security; which (if either)
should we implement? Which one has more appropriate operational
efficacy? Should we use TUF (The Update Framework) or another approach?
https://discuss.python.org/t/which-cryptographic-signing-approach/2241
and more generally:
* What should community acceptance criteria be?
* How feasible is it to implement this on PyPI?
* What features do PyPI administrators need to make use of these
features in the future?
* What work would the developer need to do to make these features more
maintainable by future Warehouse maintainers?
--
Sumana Harihareswara
PyPI project manager
Changeset Consulting
https://changeset.nyc
