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Before reading the article, I wanted to write a rant on why the TFA is wrong, based solely on the title :-) ALAS, I was wrong, especially because I downloaded P

Before reading the article, I wanted to write a rant on why the TFA is wrong, based solely on the title :-) ALAS, I was wrong, especially because I downloaded Putty myself from putty.org, whenever I happened to play with Windows machines, without thinking once that putty.org is not the official source. And I'm a very security conscious user and if I can't protect myself, then normal users don't stand a chance. Just a note - PGP signing renders HTTPS useless for downloading the binaries themselves and works by establishing a chain of trust, the problem is with distributing the public key. It's the public key that must be distributed either over HTTPS and/or through a public key server, letting other users digitally sign your certificate and thus endorse the association of this public key - a system that works great for popular repositories of software (e.g. Debian), in which the participating developers/maintainers know each other. Once the authenticity of the public key is correctly established, there's no way for an attacker to create/forge the signed binary, unless said attacker gets ahold of the private key, which is way more difficult than hacking a web server, as normally private keys don't end up on those servers (so it is more secure than HTTPS). For example, in Ubuntu if you're willing to install packages from PPAs of third-parties, you first need to indicate that you trust the public key with which those packages were signed, otherwise apt-get will refuse to install said packages. A reasonable alternative to PGP signing is S/MIME signing, which is more user-friendly, as it doesn't involve the users vetting scheme, but rather certificates are issued by a certificate authority, just like with HTTPS/SSL. S/MIME is weaker against the NSA, but it does work well for signing stuff and it's more user friendly, because to establish trust, you only have to trust the certificate authority (and of course the developer). Binaries on OS X are also distributed as signed with the developer's key and OS X refuses to install unsigned binaries or binaries signed by unknown developers, unless you force it to. And while I have mixed feelings about the App Store direction in which Apple is taking OS X, I've began to like this restriction, in spite of the money you have to pay yearly to register as a developer (as long as you can download signed binaries straight from the Internet and thus not completely locked into Apple's walled garden, it's all good). Signing binaries and having a user-friendly way to establish trust in the used signing key should be the norm in all operating systems.

acdha 13y ago
As an aide, Windows has had code signing for a LONG time: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ms537361(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ms537361(v=vs.85)... If I still ran a bunch of Windows machines used to access the internet I'd be seriously attempting to run with group policy set to block unsigned executables and, eventually, trimming the of trusted code signing CAs as well.
- bad_user 13y ago
  Never knew Windows had it, but then again I'm not a Windows user, however whenever I interacted with Windows machines it's been easy to install unsigned binaries downloaded from wherever (with warnings of various kinds, with the warning I distinctively remember being "this app is downloaded from the Internet, are you sure?", which is basically useless). Is this policy not enabled by default in the various versions of Windows? I think it is in Windows 8, right? What about 7? And why don't developers use it?
  - wolfgke 13y ago
    > And why don't developers use it? 1. Because a code signiging certificates are not cheap (although with some tricks you can shrink the prize a lot: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3091938/cheap-code-signing-to-be-windows-7-compatible http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3091938/cheap-code-signin...) 2. Because code signing is snake oil. Lots of malware is signed even with leaked driver certificates of some Asian hardware manifacturers; thus getting some leaked code signing certificate should be easy if you are used to writing malware.
    - bad_user 13y ago
      Well, code-signing with a certificate authority involved works only if you can trust the certificate authority AND the developer that signed the binary. Debian/Ubuntu's main repositories work by vetting for the maintainers that package the official binaries, with the proper keys being distributed as part of those distros. OS X works by validating if the key is a developer registered with Apple. No system is perfect, I'm sure there's plenty of malware available for Debian/Ubuntu or OS X, including repackaged popular software that looks almost legit to the unsuspecting eyes, but this process works much better if you can have a second authority (in addition to the certificate authority) that is able to say "this developer did bad things so his key is no longer considered valid" and this authority must be the maintainer/governor of the operating system as there's nobody else that really cares about malware. For Debian/Ubuntu that would be the community / Canonical, for Windows that would be Microsoft, for OS X that would be Apple.

acdha 13y ago

As an aide, Windows has had code signing for a LONG time: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ms537361(v=vs.85).aspx http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/ms537361(v=vs.85)... If I still ran a bunch of Windows machines used to access the internet I'd be seriously attempting to run with group policy set to block unsigned executables and, eventually, trimming the of trusted code signing CAs as well.

bad_user 13y ago
Never knew Windows had it, but then again I'm not a Windows user, however whenever I interacted with Windows machines it's been easy to install unsigned binaries downloaded from wherever (with warnings of various kinds, with the warning I distinctively remember being "this app is downloaded from the Internet, are you sure?", which is basically useless). Is this policy not enabled by default in the various versions of Windows? I think it is in Windows 8, right? What about 7? And why don't developers use it?
- wolfgke 13y ago
  > And why don't developers use it? 1. Because a code signiging certificates are not cheap (although with some tricks you can shrink the prize a lot: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3091938/cheap-code-signing-to-be-windows-7-compatible http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3091938/cheap-code-signin...) 2. Because code signing is snake oil. Lots of malware is signed even with leaked driver certificates of some Asian hardware manifacturers; thus getting some leaked code signing certificate should be easy if you are used to writing malware.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    Well, code-signing with a certificate authority involved works only if you can trust the certificate authority AND the developer that signed the binary. Debian/Ubuntu's main repositories work by vetting for the maintainers that package the official binaries, with the proper keys being distributed as part of those distros. OS X works by validating if the key is a developer registered with Apple. No system is perfect, I'm sure there's plenty of malware available for Debian/Ubuntu or OS X, including repackaged popular software that looks almost legit to the unsuspecting eyes, but this process works much better if you can have a second authority (in addition to the certificate authority) that is able to say "this developer did bad things so his key is no longer considered valid" and this authority must be the maintainer/governor of the operating system as there's nobody else that really cares about malware. For Debian/Ubuntu that would be the community / Canonical, for Windows that would be Microsoft, for OS X that would be Apple.