Re: system-wide crypto policies
On 27/06/13 21:44, Florian Weimer wrote:
> * Daniel Pocock:
>
>> However, are such issues at the discretion of package maintainers and
>> upstream, or is it useful to have a uniform Debian approach to
>> cryptographic strength?
>
> Keep in mind that RFC 4880 (OpenPGP) hard-codes SHA-1 in several
> places, notably for key fingerprints. If there's a uniform strength
> requirement, we need some weasel words that GnuPG remains compliant.
>
> It's also unclear if SHA-256 or SHA-512 is stronger, and if either
> really is that much better than SHA-1.
>
Just to clarify, although my query was related to the use of this hash
in GnuPG, the reason for the email on debian-devel is for the
system-wide policy on hashes: which could mean any package (e.g. git
uses SHA-1 too, some of the X.509 root certs use an SHA-1 hash)
The first question then - do we even need to care, as a project, about
being pro-active? Or just leave it at the discretion of derivatives and
end-users to make their own policies? That's quite OK as long as this
approach is documented. The security page[1] says "Debian takes
security very seriously" and some users may ask how we apply that
philosophy to SHA-1 given that it is on various alerts[2].
It may be that we say "Some packages include SHA-1 technology and if the
attack potential crosses some threshold X the security team will not
support them." Then it is up to maintainers and upstreams to think
about and start making plans for the future of their packages.
1. http://www.debian.org/security/
2. http://www.dsd.gov.au/publications/csocprotect/sha-1_deprecated.htm
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