this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2023
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Can you elaborate on this? I ask because I build my own flatpaks, and signing is part of the publishing process.
You should switch to something that's actually secure. Flatpak devs haven't addressed this since 2015, and I doubt they ever will. They don't seem to care about security.
Your earlier comment complains about pulling images securely, presumably meaning signature verification, which I believe Flatpak does.
The report you linked is about tying downloaded sources to their author using public key infrastructure, which is a different issue. APT and dpkg don't do that, either. (I know this because I build and publish with those, too.)
Can you name a packaging system that does? I can't. I would like to see it (along with reproducible builds) integrated into the software ecosystem, and I think we're moving in that direction, but it will take time to become common.
I have my own criticisms of Flatpak, mostly regarding the backwards permissions model (packages grant themselves permissions by default) and sloppy sandboxing policies on Flathub, so I caution against blindly assuming it's safe. But claiming that it doesn’t support signing of releases is just plain false.
This is not correct. APT always verifies cryptographic signature unless you explicitly disable it. Yet it's very important to understand who is signing packages. What kind of review process did the software go through? What kind of vetting did the package maintainer themselves go through?
If software is signed only by the upstream developer and no 3rd party review is done by a distribution this means trusting a stranger's account on a software forge.
Update: the Debian infrastructure supports checking gpg signatures from upstream developers i.e. on the tarballs published on software forges.
You've misunderstood what I wrote.