3 ms·
I can fix the security dialogs to help dumb users even more. I see a solution where the operating system runs an MD5 Sum against the executable code, then upda
by maeon3 15y ago
I can fix the security dialogs to help dumb users even more. I see a solution where the operating system runs an MD5 Sum against the executable code, then updates the user satisfaction results to a common website that other operating systems can query.
When you download a program, you will get one of three results, a big green bar, indicating lots of users who used this code were happy, a red bar, indicating lots of users who used this code was unhappy, or a grey bar, where nobody has ever used this code.
Red = Do not run this unless you want pain.
Grey = It's new because it's probably new malware.
Green = It's probably good, (though it could be a virus masquerading as a useful app)
You could get around this system by spoofing positive results, but it makes the job of the virus writer harder, because they have to work hard to "make it look legitimate".
- Joakal 15y agoSounds like a package manager.
- mrspandex 15y agoHow many people will know to go and rate their downloads after using them enough to have an informed opinion? I'd almost rather the person who ran the site certified software rather than crowdsourcing it.
- pmiller2 15y agoMD5 sums only verify that the binary you downloaded is not corrupted (in other words, the bits you got are the bits the server intended to send). This is not the same as cryptographically signing executables, since anybody can still replace the original file and md5sum with a malicious file and an md5sum for the malicious file. Cryptographic signatures can't be forged by technical means short of stealing someone's private key.
- mukyu 15y agoHis suggestion involved the operating system computing the md5 digest of the executable file before running it. In this case you would not be looking to see if it matches the digest that wherever you downloaded it from provided. There is no foo.md5sum for them to replace. This scheme is easily subverted many ways: by having the executable only being bad a few times, or much later than when the user could identify it as the source, or a collision attack against the hash function. Also note that digital signatures are only as strong as their components. It doesn't matter that you signed it if you use md5sum in the process of signing it. An attacker just needs a binary that has the same digest as the one the signature says it does, which results in attacks that completely ignore the bits that involve the asynchronous keys.