3 ms·

Nothing really stopping an agent from getting a key

• crote 4mo ago
  The agent can't exactly show up to an in-person key signing party, can it? And how many people are both dedicated enough to go to key signing parties and stupid enough to let an agent act without supervision in the name of their real-world identity?
  • brazzy 4mo ago
    If gpg-style web of trust became ubiquitous, it would require correspondingly less dedication. And on the other hand, if this was actually working up to an xz style supply chain attack, the dedication would certainly not be lacking.
    • account42 4mo ago
      But it would leave more of a trail - do we have any idea who Jia Tan actually was?
      • brazzy 4mo ago
        If everyone used a gpg-style web of trust based on key signing parties, it would become trivial to use a stolen or entirely fictious identity as well - there's zero chance those parties would actually check identities in ways that cannot easily be defeated by a determined and resourceful attacker.
  • m4rtink 4mo ago
    In this case the nathan-bot was also still on a plausible side - all the PRs looked kinda trivial & there were not outright rejections that would be a red flag for a maintainer checking the GitHub account activity during PR review. Mucking with Bugzilla & reassigning bugs especially is what seems to have led to the discovery, rather than spotting an accumulation of nonsensical PRs or other behavior related to code unmasking the bot.
• thwarted 4mo ago
  Having a key isn't a distinguishing aspect, it's the position in the "web of trust" network that is important.
• thewebguyd 4mo ago
  That's what key signing parties are for. In person verification.
• transmit101 4mo ago
  > Nothing really stopping an agent from getting a key It very much is possible to prevent an agent from having access to a key. For example, local encryption, Yubikey or other hardware device, or just running the agent in an isolated environment.