Adam Williamson wrote:
1. We *still don't have compulsory 2FA for Fedora packagers*. We
*still
don't have compulsory 2FA for Fedora packagers*. *WE STILL DON'T HAVE
COMPULSORY 2FA FOR FEDORA PACKAGERS*.
This 2FA nonsense needs to stop! GitHub has enforced compulsory 2FA for
contributors for a while, starting with "important" projects, then getting
stricter and stricter. It has done absolutely nothing to stop this attack.
How could it, when the backdoor was apparently introduced by the authorized
maintainer? (Or if not, the attacker must have had access to their 2FA
secret as well.) So, 2FA DOES NOT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM! STOP FORCING 2FA ON
US! And especially DO NOT abuse this incident as an excuse to force 2FA down
our throats, since 2FA DOES NOT SOLVE THIS PROBLEM. Sorry for being
repetitive, but you were, too. THIS 2FA NONSENSE NEEDS TO STOP!
2. Our process for vetting packagers is, let's face it, from a
security
perspective almost *comically* patchy. There are 140 sponsors in the
packager FAS group. Any one of those people - or someone who
compromises any one of those 140 accounts - can grant any other person
on earth Fedora packager status. Our policy on how they should do this
is
https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/package-maintainers/How_to_Sponsor_a...
. The words "trust" and "identity" do not appear in it. There is,
AFAIK, no policy or procedure by which inactive sponsors have this
power removed. There is no mandatory 2FA policy for sponsors.
We already have a manpower problem, how is removing sponsors going to
improve the situation?
3. We have no mechanism to flag when J. Random Packager adds
"Supplements: glibc" to their random leaf node package. As a reminder,
*we are a project that allows 1,601 minimally-vetted people to deliver
arbitrary code executed as root on hundreds of thousands of systems*,
and this mechanism allows any one of those people to cause the package
they have complete control over to be automatically pulled in as a
dependency on virtually every single one of those systems.
This would get noticed pretty quickly, when that package comes up in update
transactions for no reason. I believe this has never happened so far. It is
just too obvious.
Kevin Kofler