Signing release binaries
5 messages, 29 to 30 Jul 2012. Started by Mike Hearn.
Mike Hearn, Peter Vessenes, Luke Dashjr, Cameron Garnham, Peter Pauly
MacOS X 10.8 makes application signing borderline mandatory, in that you cannot run unsigned apps unless you tweak your settings via the control panel. You must sign with a certificate issued by Apple via their "identified developer" program.
Windows allows but does not require signing. However, anti-virus systems tend to use signers with good reputation as a whitelisting signal. Signing Bitcoin releases makes sense because it may lead to, at minimum, higher performance if AV engines ignore file reads/writes by Bitcoin. And it can also shield us from false positives. You only need to see the mess that the mining tools world has become to understand why this is important.
As I don't take part in the release process, I can't help out with this directly, but I believe it's important and would be willing to throw some money in towards buying the signing certs for both platforms. I guess Gavin would be the final signer.
This is a good idea. I think I can come up with the cash, I will follow up with gavin.
Sent from my smartphone!
On Jul 29, 2012, at 7:18 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net> wrote:
Quoted text (28 lines)
> MacOS X 10.8 makes application signing borderline mandatory, in that > you cannot run unsigned apps unless you tweak your settings via the > control panel. You must sign with a certificate issued by Apple via > their "identified developer" program. > > Windows allows but does not require signing. However, anti-virus > systems tend to use signers with good reputation as a whitelisting > signal. Signing Bitcoin releases makes sense because it may lead to, > at minimum, higher performance if AV engines ignore file reads/writes > by Bitcoin. And it can also shield us from false positives. You only > need to see the mess that the mining tools world has become to > understand why this is important. > > As I don't take part in the release process, I can't help out with > this directly, but I believe it's important and would be willing to > throw some money in towards buying the signing certs for both > platforms. I guess Gavin would be the final signer. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Live Security Virtual Conference > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions > will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware > threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ > _______________________________________________ > Bitcoin-development mailing list > Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge•net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
On Sunday, July 29, 2012 10:17:51 AM Mike Hearn wrote:
Quoted text (1 line)
> I guess Gavin would be the final signer.
Considering that Gavin is not interested in participating in any way in the stable versions, I would prefer to see someone else responsible for OS-vendor signing.
I'm not a vendor, however I have a code-signing key for windows; I could sign the windows installer and binary.
On 30/07/2012 3:15 AM, Luke-Jr wrote:
Quoted text (19 lines)
> On Sunday, July 29, 2012 10:17:51 AM Mike Hearn wrote: >> I guess Gavin would be the final signer. > > Considering that Gavin is not interested in participating in any way in the > stable versions, I would prefer to see someone else responsible for OS-vendor > signing. > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Live Security Virtual Conference > Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and > threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions > will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware > threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ > _______________________________________________ > Bitcoin-development mailing list > Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge•net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development >
I'd like to see the binaries signed with gpg, independent of any signatures required for various operating systems.
I can't imagine a worse scenario than the bitcoin.org site being hacked and the binaries replaced with wallet-stealing code. All of the developers seem to have gpg keys, how hard can it be to provide a detached gpg signature for the binary?