3 ms·

> If you host the file in one place and the website in a different place it's harder for an attacker to change both the file and the website that reports the ch

> If you host the file in one place and the website in a different place it's harder for an attacker to change both the file and the website that reports the checksum, ... That is not a practical solution at all. What do users find if they enter the "download" page? A link to an external site containing the checksum? Wouldn't an attacker just replace (or remove!) the link? The reality of today's identity management is TLS and certificates. If your website is https://oya.sh https://oya.sh, then obviously any attacker who has access to the web server can direct clients to their malware downloads. No extra servers will help against that.

marzell 7y ago
Perhaps not practical, but I could see this as one actually useful example of how a blockchain-style distributed ledger could be used. Have two accounts, one posts the binaries, another posts the checksums. That way one account breach doesn't compromise the whole thing, and the ledger could prove the history, etc.
- tomtomtom777 7y ago
  Agreed. There could be better solutions than the current reliance on X.509 certificates and TLS, for example a blockchain solution like you propose. But the fact that these solutions do not exist or at least aren't commonplace, makes the criticism to Oya in this regard rather awkward. They are doing what everybody does for their downloads: Relying on the certificate chain.
onion2k 7y ago
A link to an external site containing the checksum? Wouldn't an attacker just replace (or remove!) the link? It wouldn't need to be an external site. You can have more than one server running a domain, with a different set of keys (entirely different architecture if you want) to make hacking both harder.
- tomtomtom777 7y ago
  I still don't really see how this makes hacking harder. An attacker needs to replace the information presented to the user in order to download the software. For instance, the "download" link, or the paragraph describing the download/checksum procedure. This always originates from one spot for one user. You can spread among users, but you can not spread a single html snippet over machines in a way that a hacker couldn't replace the "root" html snippet.

marzell 7y ago

Perhaps not practical, but I could see this as one actually useful example of how a blockchain-style distributed ledger could be used. Have two accounts, one posts the binaries, another posts the checksums. That way one account breach doesn't compromise the whole thing, and the ledger could prove the history, etc.

tomtomtom777 7y ago
Agreed. There could be better solutions than the current reliance on X.509 certificates and TLS, for example a blockchain solution like you propose. But the fact that these solutions do not exist or at least aren't commonplace, makes the criticism to Oya in this regard rather awkward. They are doing what everybody does for their downloads: Relying on the certificate chain.

onion2k 7y ago

A link to an external site containing the checksum? Wouldn't an attacker just replace (or remove!) the link? It wouldn't need to be an external site. You can have more than one server running a domain, with a different set of keys (entirely different architecture if you want) to make hacking both harder.

tomtomtom777 7y ago
I still don't really see how this makes hacking harder. An attacker needs to replace the information presented to the user in order to download the software. For instance, the "download" link, or the paragraph describing the download/checksum procedure. This always originates from one spot for one user. You can spread among users, but you can not spread a single html snippet over machines in a way that a hacker couldn't replace the "root" html snippet.