Re: Relative security of Community repos and packages

Greetings,

* pbj(at)cmicdo(dot)com (pbj(at)cmicdo(dot)com) wrote:
> On Thursday, July 29, 2021, 3:32:33 PM EDT, Dave Cramer <davecramer(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:  > On Thu, 29 Jul 2021 at 15:25, pbj(at)cmicdo(dot)com <pbj(at)cmicdo(dot)com> wrote:
>  > On Thursday, July 29, 2021, 11:28:03 AM EDT, Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> wrote:
>  > > * Tom Lane (tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us) wrote:
>  > > > Stephen Frost <sfrost(at)snowman(dot)net> writes:
>  > > > > Indeed, that comment didn't seem to help clear things up. I'm guessing Dave
>  > > > > is referring to the fact that we have a separate "gitmaster" server, which
>  > > > > is also maintained by pginfra and is where committers actually push changes
>  > > > > to, and then that is mirrored to git.postgresql.org.  I didn't check which
>  > > > > repo the tarball building script pulls from (which is run on pginfra, in
>  > > > > case anyone is wondering about that) and perhaps it pulls from gitmaster
>  > > > > and not git.p.o.
>  > > >
>  > > > It does pull from gitmaster.  There are multiple reasons for this design,
>  > > > but one is that a compromise of our public git server wouldn't imperil
>  > > > the contents of the official tarballs.
>  > >
>  > > That doesn't do much for the large number of folks who use
>  > > git.postgresql.org or the github mirror though, unfortunately.  Signed
>  > > commits, on the other hand, would help.
>  >
>  > A slightly different tack on this question:  How quickly would you
>  > notice that a rogue RPM had been inserted into the repo and then be
>  > able to fix it?
>  >
>  > By someone other than the trusted RPM builder ?
> Yes.

No idea, it really depends on a lot of factors such as exactly how it
was put in place and when it ends up being reported (and quite possibly
where, for that matter..). We do regularly re-sync from the primary FTP
server to the others, so it would also depend on which system was first
compromised- the build server, the ftp primary server, or one of the
other ftp servers. Also, while the pginfra team has members from a few
different timezones, we certainly don't have anything like 24/7/365
coverage. I'm sure there's things we could do to improve on this, but
we're also a volunteer group and there's only so many hours. We'd be
happy to chat with folks who are interested in helping. :)

Thanks,

Stephen