Reflections on Trusting Trust

[Colin Percival]

aristeu wrote:
>> Can you explain what you mean here.  Virtually all distfiles needed to
>> build a port have MD5 and maybe SHA-256 hashes embedded in the ports
>> tree.  The only way to easily circumvent these is to subvert the ports
>> tree - which gets back to the issue of trusting the FreeBSD distribution.
>> I agree that there's currently no integrity checking on packages.
>> (And, BTW, tar has no integrity checks).
> 
> Anyone who is between you and freebsd cvsup server can make his own ports
> tree repository. That being done, he just need to redirect your connection
> and wait 'til your next cvsup sync is done.

This is why I wrote portsnap.

Colin Percival