[Catalog-sig] A modest proposal for securing PyPI with TUF

[Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy]

Hello Nick,

On 3/13/13 4:09 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
>
> - the PSF board generally stays out of the technical details of
> running the python.org infrastructure, so it's likely that any root
> keys would be handled by the PSF infrastructure committee. A (2, 4) or
> (3, 5) trust configuration would likely be manageable at this level.

Understood. We think a higher (t, n) [where t out of n signatures are 
needed to trust the metadata for a role] is better for the root role 
simply because its crucial metadata (the authorized keys for top-level 
roles) should change very rarely.

> - at the target delegation level, PyPI supports the registration of
> new projects through the web service (see
> http://docs.python.org/2/distutils/packageindex.html). If my
> understanding of target delegation is correct, this means the "simple"
> and "packages/source/<letter>" delegations will need to be (1, 1) and
> online.
> - higher levels of the target delegation hierarchy could conceivably
> be kept offline, but there seems little value in doing so if they're
> trusting on online (1, 1) key

Fortunately, the "targets/simple" and 
"targets/packages/(version)/(letter)/" roles should not require (1, 1) 
online keys, as their metadata (simply target delegations and no actual 
target files) should also fluctuate fairly rarely. I should make this 
clearer in our design document.

> - many PyPI packages are maintained by single developers, so (1, 1) or
> (1, n) is likely to be the only generally feasible level of signing at
> the project level.

Yes, the package developers themselves could choose any (t, n) they 
like. In our design, we propose that PyPI could eventually delegate to 
"stable" packages which need little change (and use more security with 
more offline keys) and to "unstable" packages which need frequent change 
(and use less security with more online keys).

> With the current focus being on getting an improvement from the status
> quo that we can successfully deploy in a reasonable period of time,
> the target delegation side of things probably needs to be
> substantially simpler in the initial iteration. Yes, it leaves us open
> to certain vulnerabilities we would like to remove in the long run,
> but we need to be very cautious in the additional demands we place on
> the users uploading to PyPI. It may even mean the initial iteration
> allows projects to rely on a PyPI provided signing key for their TUF
> metadata, using the existing upload mechanisms to add the files to
> PyPI.

I agree that there is a delicate problem of balancing security with 
usability here, especially in the beginning.

You raised a very good issue there: on first migration, how would PyPI 
accommodate packages which have not had their target files delegated to 
their developers? We imagine that in this case, PyPI could assume 
initial responsibility for these packages, and later PyPI would delegate 
those packages to their respective developers.

Thanks for your input,
Trishank