4 ms·
The one obvious flaw is the "email us for our PGP key" - distributing the public key in private and over an insecure channel makes it vulnerable to replacement.
by ig1 13y ago
The one obvious flaw is the "email us for our PGP key" - distributing the public key in private and over an insecure channel makes it vulnerable to replacement.
Has anyone written a "best practices" guide for designing a security page ?
- jarrett 13y agoIn theory, PGP public keys shouldn't depend on being sent over a more-secure medium like SSL, because they're signed. One of the main points of PGP's design is that you can't spoof a public key, because you can't spoof its signatures. That being said, in practice, I don't know that everyone is diligent about checking signatures of public keys they receive. An attacker could create a spoofed key, sign it with several other identities controlled by the attacker, and hope those signatures are enough to fool the unweary.
- giovannibajo1 13y agoThe point is that you need an entry point of trust. So either you have been in many different signing parties and you happen to have a reasonable connection with the key, or they must give you a trust reference on the website, preferably through HTTPS. At which point, they can just publish the key on the website.
- jarrett 13y agoYes, that would definitely be a viable strategy. It's probably the easiest one, and it's what I would do. In general, using HTTPS for anything related to your bug bounty program is probably good hygiene. Though even without that, I don't think you need to have been to a lot of key signing parties. The entry point of trust could very well be another organization--not GitHub, not someone at a key signing party. As long as the signature chain points back to an identity you can trust, you're good to go.
- tlrobinson 13y agoWhy don't they just publish the key on the site?
- tptacek 13y agoThey should.
- danielsiders 13y agoProbably because security@ emails are routed through their normal helpdesk system which doesn't handle PGP properly.
- akerl_ 13y agoI doubt that their security emails do that, but even if they do, changing how you get the key wouldn't fix a PGP compatibility issue, since once you have the key you'd still be emailing them using it.
- eyeareque 13y agoThey should post it, and preferably on an https site.