python-tuf [1] back then assumed that everything was manipulated locally, yes, but a lot has changed since then: you can now read/write metadata entirely in memory, and integrate with different key management backend systems such as GCP.
More importantly, I should point out that while Sigstore's Fulcio will help with key management (think of it as a managed GPG, if you will), it will not help with securely mapping software projects to their respective OIDC identities. Without this, how will verifiers know in a secure yet scalable way which Fulcio keys _should_ be used? Otherwise, we would then be back to the GPG PKI problem with its web of trust.
This is where PEP 480 [2] can help: you can use TUF (especially after TAP 18 [3]) to do this secure mapping. Marina Moore has also written a proposal called Transparent TUF [4] for having Sigstore manage such a TUF repository for registries like PyPI. This is not to mention the other benefits that TUF can give you (e.g., protection from freeze, rollback, and mix-and-match attacks). We should definitely continue discussing this sometime.
> >The complexity designed into this system might make sense. TUF is very complex and not worth it for most projects, but Debian is exactly what TUF is designed for.
I disagree that TUF is too complicated for most projects. While our documentation, tutorials, and tooling can be better, the setup is about just as complicated as, say, devising an in-toto root layout. Most open source projects should really just worry about subscribing to something like PEP 480 and signing with one-time Fulcio keys. But I think we are largely on the same page here: yes, please just minisign/signify if you want simplicity, but if you want resilience from nation-state attacks, you need something like TUF (coupled with in-toto and sigstore). We are happy to advise.
signify is nice when key distribution, revocation, and rotation is handled for you... but how do you do that securely for many different publishers on a single repo?
Don't miss how we used TUF [1] and in-toto [2] to build compromise-resilient CI/CD (the first in the industry AFAICT) for the Datadog Agent integrations [3][4] that detects attacks anywhere between our developers and end-users
CI/CD is critical to any DevOps operation today, but when attackers compromise it, they get to distribute malicious software to millions of unsuspecting users. We present how Datadog used TUF and in-toto to develop, to the best of our knowledge, the industry’s first end-to-end verified pipeline that automatically builds integrations for the Datadog agent. That is, even if this pipeline is compromised, users should not be able to install malware. We will show a demonstration of our pipeline in production being used to protect users of the Datadog agent, and describe how you can use TUF + in-toto to secure your own pipeline.
"AGL includes the meta-updater Yocto layer that enables OTA software updates via Uptane, an automotive-specific extension to The Update Framework. Uptane and TUF are open standards that define a secure protocol for delivering and verifying updates even when the servers and network–internet and car-internal–aren’t fully trusted."
More importantly, I should point out that while Sigstore's Fulcio will help with key management (think of it as a managed GPG, if you will), it will not help with securely mapping software projects to their respective OIDC identities. Without this, how will verifiers know in a secure yet scalable way which Fulcio keys _should_ be used? Otherwise, we would then be back to the GPG PKI problem with its web of trust.
This is where PEP 480 [2] can help: you can use TUF (especially after TAP 18 [3]) to do this secure mapping. Marina Moore has also written a proposal called Transparent TUF [4] for having Sigstore manage such a TUF repository for registries like PyPI. This is not to mention the other benefits that TUF can give you (e.g., protection from freeze, rollback, and mix-and-match attacks). We should definitely continue discussing this sometime.
[1] https://github.com/theupdateframework/python-tuf
[2] https://peps.python.org/pep-0480/
[3] https://github.com/theupdateframework/taps/blob/master/tap18...
[4] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WPOXLMV1ASQryTRZJbdg3wWR...