[arch-general] Stronger Hashes for PKGBUILDs

[Gregory Mullen]

Grayhatter here, developer of Tox -- The security centered TAV client. No
matter what the reason is, NO ONE should be using MD5. We can argue about
what hash we want to use, but literally nothing, is better than using MD5.
I don't mean MD5 is better than everything else, I mean NOT using a hash,
is better than using MD5.

The argument that an insecure hash is fine because it doesn't need to be
secure, and that PGP is a better replacement; Is a plainly BAD argument.
The issue at hand is not, what should we use to verify the authenticity of
the packages. The question is, is MD5 an acceptable hashing algorithm? We
all know it's not. If given the choice, NO ONE who knows about the SERIOUS
issues with MD5 would think it's a reasonable suggestion.

Switching to sha256/512 isn't a hard switch `sha{256,512}sum` is in
coreutils (a member of base no less).

To recap... we have a lot of good reasons to drop MD5 like the broken algo
it is. No applicable reasons why need to keep it. So... why haven't we
replaced it yet?

On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 7:37 PM, David C. Rankin <
drankinatty at suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/03/2016 10:37 PM, Maxwell Anselm via arch-general wrote:
> >> You mean the source files that you downloaded and then hashed...
> >>
> > Yes. If the source files are being modified via a MITM attack (which is
> > trivial if the host uses HTTP) the checksum is still useful.
>
> This sounds a lot like a "solution in search of a problem to fix" and
> blindly
> applying any "fix" where it is proveably meaningless really causes
> credibility
> (not to mention the Arch KISS philosophy) to take a beating.
>
> I'm all for validation and stronger hashes, but applying them in a
> circumstance where there is no way to validate against any original -- is
> just
> bat-shit crazy.
>
> --
> David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
>