SIsimonpure·Sep 9, 2020Submission
The Update Framework Specification
2 points · Open discussiontheupdateframework
specification
Python2019–2020
theupdateframework / specification
specification
The Update Framework specification
2Distinct people
3Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
411GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
The Update Framework specification
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 12:54:37 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by month3 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2019-02-17 18:39:30 UTC to 2020-09-09 14:43:50 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 2019 | 2019-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Mar 2019 | 2019-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2019 | 2019-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2019 | 2019-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2019 | 2019-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2019 | 2019-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2019 | 2019-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2019 | 2019-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 2019 | 2019-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Nov 2019 | 2019-11-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Dec 2019 | 2019-12-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jan 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Feb 2020 | 2020-02-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Mar 2020 | 2020-03-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Apr 2020 | 2020-04-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| May 2020 | 2020-05-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jun 2020 | 2020-06-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jul 2020 | 2020-07-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Aug 2020 | 2020-08-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Sep 2020 | 2020-09-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 1 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
3 sourcesEstimates of prevalence do assume detection. How would we detect that a dependency that was installed a few deployments and reboots ago was compromised?
How does the classic infosec triad (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) apply to software supply chain security?
Confidentiality: Presumably we're talking about open source projects; which aren't confidential. Projects may request responsible disclosure in an e.g. security.txt; and vuln reports may be confidential for at least a little while.
Integrity: Secure transport protocols, checksums, and cryptographic code signing are ways to mitigate data integrity risks. GitHub supports SSH, 2FA, and GPG keys. Can all keys in the package signature keyring be used to sign any package? Can we verify a public key over a different channel? When we specify exact versions of software dependencie
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s, can we also record package hashes which the package installer(s) will verify?
Availability: What are the internal and external data, network, and service dependencies for the development and deployment DevSecOps workflows? Can we deploy from local package mirrors? Who is responsible for securing and updating local package mirrors? Are these service dependencies all HA? Does everything in this system also depend upon the load balancer? Does our container registry support e.g. Docker Notary (TUF)? How should we mirror TUF package repos?
See also: "Guidance for [[transparent] proxy cache] partial mirrors?" https://github.com/theupdateframework/specification/issues/1...
> I'd love if it could be rooted in a Yubikey.
FIDO2 and Yubico helped develop the new W3C WebAuthn standard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebAuthn
But WebAuthn does not solve for WoT or PKI or certificate pinning.
> Decoupling the "signing" and "verifying" parts seem like a good idea. As random Person signs something, how someone else figures out how to go trust that signature is a separate problem.
Someone can probably help with terminology here. There's identification (proving that a person has the key AND that it's their key (biometrics, challenge-response)), signing (using a key to create a cryptographic signature – for the actual data or a reasonably secure cryptographic hash of said data – that could only could have been created with the given key), signature verification (checking that the signature was created by the claimed key
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for the given data), and then there's trusting that the given key is authorized for a specific purpose (Web of Trust (key-signing parties), PKI, ACME, exchange of symmetric keys over a different channel such as QKD) by e.g. signing a structured document that links cryptographic keys with keys for specific authorized functions and trusting the key(s) used to sign said authorizing document.
Private (e.g. Zero Knowledge) blockchains can be used for key exchange and key rotation. Public blockchains can be used for sharing (high-entropy) key components; also with an optional exchange of money to increase the cost of key compromise attempts.
There's also WKD: "Web Key Directory"; which hosts GPG keys over HTTPS from a .well-known URL for a given user@domain identifier:
https://wiki.gnupg.org/WKD
Compared to existing PGP/GPG keyservers, WKD does rely upon HTTPS.
TUF is based on Thandy.
TUF: "The Update Framework" does not presume channel security (is designed to withstand channel compromise)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Update_Framework_(TUF)
The TUF spec doesn't mention PGP/GPG: https://github.com/theupdateframework/specification/blob/mas...
There's a derivative of TUF for automotive applications called Uptane:
https://uptane.github.io
The Bitcoin article on multisignature; 1-of-2, 2-of-2, 2-of-3, 3-of-5, etc.: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multisignature