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Even if most gem developers would understand, there's still a problem with the trust model: If you choose "high security", you cannot install a single gem witho
by Xylakant 14y ago
Even if most gem developers would understand, there's still a problem with the trust model: If you choose "high security", you cannot install a single gem without signature - so things won't work unless _all_ authors sign their gems. Gem signing would have to be a requirement, similar to packages on ubuntu's ppa. If you choose a lower security setting, a gem may just be repackaged and signed again by the attacker or the signature removed.
- mratzloff 14y agoA solution that doesn't solve 100% of the problem is still not a bad solution. The most popular gems would all be signed, thereby dramatically reducing attack vectors.
- Xylakant 14y agoNo, as I said, this doesn't help. You would need to sign the most popular gems and all their dependencies and the dependencies dependencies. Given that a pretty much standard rails app can easily pull in hundred or more gems that's quite a bit of work. It's doable, but I only see that coming if for example rubygems requires a key and gem signatures. Then there's still the unsolved problem of providing key trust - the current implementation relies on self-signed certificates.