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Message-ID: <87eco91kzi.fsf@josefsson.org>
Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2026 15:11:13 +0100
From: Simon Josefsson <simon@...efsson.org>
To: Collin Funk <collin.funk1@...il.com>
Cc: oss-security@...ts.openwall.com, kf503bla@...k.com
Subject: Re: Best practices for signature verifcation
I forget a major aspect the competition is doing worse than PGP: public
key distribution. While PGP key distribution has been a continous
problematic matter, it may be because the PGP ecosystem attempts to
address this problem and the other sign+verify technologies has given up
on solving it.
Collin Funk <collin.funk1@...il.com> writes:
> Doesn't Sigstore require a centralized Rekor instance? That was the
> impression I based on a very brief look at it previously.
Yes, but I don't see that as a major problem since the transparency
model uses monitors/witnesses to keep instances honest. Same situation
with Sigsum really. Sigstore/Sigsum offers properties none of the other
solutions offer, so it may be a price that we need to pay to get those
properties. I think this is somewhat different compared to other
centralized services patterns, which is generally a deal-breaker.
Demi Marie Obenour <demiobenour@...il.com> writes:
> I do think that better CMS/PKCS#7 implementations would be worth
> pursuing. This is because it is hard-coded into a huge number
> of applications that will be extremely difficult to change.
> These include:
>
> - Windows and UEFI Authenticode.
> - macOS and iOS code signing.
> - Legally binding CMS Advanced Electronic Signatures (CAdES).
Why is compatibility with that an argument? I don't think CMS/PKCS#7
offers anything compelling that PGP doesn't, and the complexity is
horrible (just think ASN1).
> Would it be possible to standardize some form of metadata for SSH signatures?
>
> CMS and OpenPGP support time-stamping countersignatures is critical.
> This is critical for some applications, notably Authenticode and CAdES.
> Should this be supported?
Is that a critical feature for a signature format? Why not just design
a metadata format for that use-case, and sign the metadata using SSH
signatures?
Feature creep in signature systems seems to be a big problem that
eventually turns them into a copy of PGP or CMS.
/Simon
Download attachment "signature.asc" of type "application/pgp-signature" (1252 bytes)
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