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Re: JCE Code Signing Certificate



Hi,

On Wed, 2005-10-12 at 16:45 +0200, Florian Weimer wrote:
> >> In the meantime, it occurred to me that the certified key (including
> >> the private key) would have to be included in the source package,
> >> otherwise the package would fail to build from source.
> >> 
> >> While I see nothing in Sun's form that requires us to keep the private
> >> key secret, publishing it still not be such a good idea.
> >
> > The key must be kept secret, otherwise it can't be trusted (i.e. people
> > could maliciously modify the code, and then sign their modifications).
> 
> And how would this be a problem?  Keep in mind that it's apparently
> pretty easy to obtain your own certificate.
> 
> (That's part of the reason why I still wonder why this signature is
> necessary.)

I quickly looked at this and it seems this is something really specific
to the proprietary jce implementation which refuses to load security
providers that aren't "signed" by a key trusted by Sun. The free
implementations based on GNU Classpath don't have any such restrictions.
You are free to link against any security provider you feel would help
you do your job.

It is unclear to me why Sun wants to control this especially since they
seem to be liberal in handing out "trusted" certificates which you can
then share with anybody you wish (like the users of your debian packages
so they have the same freedoms as the packager).

Cheers,

Mark

-- 
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