Re: Mass bug filing: Cryptographic protection against modification
On Tue, May 04, 2004 at 07:44:15AM -0500, John Hasler wrote:
> Herbert Xu wrote:
> > Consider the hypothetical case of a piece of firmware for a peripheral
> > device that is protected by a cryptographic signature such that the
> > device will reject anything that is not signed using a specific key.
> >
> > Let's further assume that that the said firmware is distributed with
> > full source (but without the private key used to make the signature)
> > and a license saying that you can do whatever you wish with it.
>
> Matt writes:
> > I'll be interested to see what happens when we get software in that
> > situation proposed for Debian.
>
> Doesn't seem likely. What purpose would such a thing serve?
The attempted inclusion of otherwise-DFSG software into Debian main intended
to run on hardware which will only accept a crypto-signed binary?
Presumably because someone wants Debian to support the hardware in question.
I will find it interesting to see whether that software is accepted by
ftpmasters and the debian-legal mavens, as the software licence is Free, but
the source code is of near-to-zero usefulness, so the question of the
Freeness of the source is academic.
Call it perverse curiousity...
- Matt
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