The correct way is to have M of N signatures on specific package manager pinned versions. And you trust the auditors to look at each new version, of a well-known package.
We should start a project and get it funded, to do just that. The money can go to LLM tokens for audits, at least, and hosting the multisigs and the package managers.
Anyone want to partner on this? See my profile on HN and email me.
Curl piped into a shell command provides no means to verify that the download is uncorrupted and unmodified before running it. For example, whenever I download software manually I check the downloaded file against the verified checksums to ensure that I have an unmodified version. Ideally I check this with gpg --verify on the signed checksum file (against the source's public key). This is a standard procedure for many organizations [1]. If you just download something and immediately run it without this step, you could potentially run a hacked version of the installation script.
SSL/TLS/HTTPS is more about encrypting the traffic and ensuring that there was no tampering with the file between you and the server. The steps that I describe are more about ensuring that there was no tampering between you and the original source. Those are two separate problems. If you just rely on HTTPS, somebody can replace the file on the server with a modified version, and you would not know.
It is also possible to have a signed file that you can use to check the authenticity of a downloaded file directly without having to use checksums. Rust [1] does it that way for its other installation methods.
[1] https://forge.rust-lang.org/infra/other-installation-methods...
But this is new software from someone no one trusts yet. Verifying the binary was not maliciously replaced by someone else doesn’t matter.
What we need here is a reproducible build made and published by an independent third-party.
Would you feel safer if they offered a .deb? Do you unpack and inspect every .deb you install?
A .deb file has many advantages over curl piped into a shell. You can check the contents before installation, you can potentially verify the authenticity of the .deb file, and dpkg makes it possible to uninstall the package later since it keeps track of what it installed in an organized manner.
I won't say that I would feel safer with a .deb file. That depends on the source, what the package does, and other factors. Security is about tradeoffs. I personally find the tradeoffs associated with a .deb file better than the tradeoffs of curl piped into a shell, but I myself do not install .deb files in the first place since I get almost everything that I need from package repositories.
Depending on third party packaging (distribution-validated install) is much higher friction.
What we are really missing is an explicit progression from new software to maintained packages across distribution. As it is, each distro expects each package to have a maintainer, and very few people actually want to do that across several distros just to release their software. Generally, the expectation is to instead just wait around for people to make and maintain those packages by virtue of their own interest in your software, but it takes a while, and discoverability isn't automatic.
Not defending the practice, I don’t like it. But the intent is to make it easier.
It's completely insane our desktop OSes are holding highly private data like banking details with zero meaningful support for sand-boxing.
This whole problem would be a non-issue if we got proper auditing and management tools. If we could properly inspect our system's resources and see what sandbox has access to what and when and how and at what time, etc. I could draw a line around a "file" or "directory" and proclaim it to be off-limits to everything but "banking app" or whatever.
All the signature verification in the world won't protect my sensitive data from being raw-dogged by this Verified(TM) binary blob. I understand it solves a different problem, but to me all this "proper package management" is theater if the other side of the equation is not being handled with the same amount of attention.