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> This is a large misunderstanding of how it works. You can't MITM millions of servers around the world just because they use HTTP for downloading their apt arc
by SahAssar 7y ago
> This is a large misunderstanding of how it works. You can't MITM millions of servers around the world just because they use HTTP for downloading their apt archives.
Actually, a bug allowing exactly that was in the last 3 ubuntu LTS versions: https://justi.cz/security/2019/01/22/apt-rce.html https://justi.cz/security/2019/01/22/apt-rce.html https://usn.ubuntu.com/3863-1/ https://usn.ubuntu.com/3863-1/
If they used HTTPS then an attacker would have to control the mirror instead of being able to perform the attack as a MITM.
Also using HTTP allows someone in the middle to know what software is installed on a server, which while not critical if it is kept up to date it leaks some information.
- lucb1e 7y agoI wasn't aware that plain http was what made that attack practical, that's good to know. And while not disagreeing with your point, I meant that it isn't supposed to be interceptable despite being plain text, due to the integrity check, so it isn't inherently insecure, just (significantly?) less hardened than if it would use https only. For the 'which software is installed' argument (confidentiality in addition to integrity), I agreed but your first link actually argues this: > the privacy gains [of using https] are minimal, because the sizes of packages are well-known