October 31st 2017

Free software activities in October 2017

Here is my monthly update covering what I have been doing in the free software world in October 2017 (previous month):


Reproducible builds


Whilst anyone can inspect the source code of free software for malicious flaws, most software is distributed pre-compiled to end users.

The motivation behind the Reproducible Builds effort is to allow verification that no flaws have been introduced — either maliciously or accidentally — during this compilation process by promising identical results are always generated from a given source, thus allowing multiple third-parties to come to a consensus on whether a build was compromised.

I have generously been awarded a grant from the Core Infrastructure Initiative to fund my work in this area.

This month I:



I also made the following changes to our tooling:

diffoscope

diffoscope is our in-depth and content-aware diff utility that can locate and diagnose reproducibility issues.

  • Improve names in output of "internal" binwalk members. (#877525).
  • Don't crash on malformed md5sums files. (#877473).
  • Omit misleading "any of" prefix when only complaining about a single module on import. [...]
  • Adjust tests as ps2ascii now varies its output on timezone. [...]

strip-nondeterminism

strip-nondeterminism is our tool to remove specific non-deterministic results from a completed build.

  • Clojure considers .class file to be stale if it shares the same timestamp of the .clj. We thus adjust the timestamps of the .clj to always be younger. (#877418).
  • Print a message in --verbose mode if no canonical time was specified. [...]

buildinfo.debian.net

buildinfo.debian.net is my experiment into how to process, store and distribute .buildinfo files after the Debian archive software has processed them.

  • Always show SHA-256 checksums, regardless of the browser viewport size. [...]
  • Add an API endpoint to fetch specific .buildinfo files for a certain package/version/architecture. [...]


Debian

My activities as the current Debian Project Leader are covered in my "Bits from the DPL" email to the debian-devel-announce mailing list.

Patches contributed

  • devscripts: Please print the actual arguments debuild makes to Lintian. (#880124)
  • hw-detect: Drop reference to floppy disks; it's almost 2018. (#880122)
  • debci:
    • Use deb.debian.org over http.debian.net. (#879654)
    • Document how to use an alternative mirror. (#879655)

Debian LTS


This month I have been paid to work 18 hours on Debian Long Term Support (LTS). In that time I did the following:

  • "Frontdesk" duties, triaging CVEs, etc.
  • Followed up on a large number of upstream "pings" that have been left dormant.
  • Issued DLA 1121-1 to fix an out-of-bounds read vulnerability in curl where a malicious FTP server could abuse this to prevent clients from interacting with it.
  • Issued DLA 1123-1 for the "Go" programming language where an attacker could generate a MIME request such that the server ran out of file descriptors.
  • Issued DLA 1126-1 for the libxfont font selection and rasterisation library, correcting two vulnerabilities, both involving the library being tricked into reading invalid/random memory.
  • Issued DLA 1134-1 for sdl-image1.2, an image loading library. A maliciously-crafted .xcf file could cause a stack-based buffer overflow resulting in potential code execution.

Uploads

  • python-django:
    • 2.0~beta1-1 — New upstream 2.x release.
    • 1.11.6-1 — New upstream bugfix release.
  • gunicorn (19.6.0-10+deb9u1) — Prepared a release for stable to avoid a runtime dependency on a compiler. (#877722)
  • redis:
    • 4:4.0.2-3:
      • Drop the Debian-specific /etc/redis/redis-server.pre-up.d (etc.) hooks and remove them if unchanged.
      • Include systemd redis-server@.service and redis-sentinel@.service template files to easily run multiple Redis instances. (#877702)
      • Patch redis.conf and sentinel.conf with quilt instead of maintaining our own versions under debian/.
    • 4:4.0.2-4:
      • Add input validity checking to cluster config slot numbers to fix CVE-2017-15047. (#878076)
      • Drop debian/bin/generate-parts now we aren't calling it.
      • Correct Bash-ism in NEWS file.
    • 4:4.0.2-5: Replace the existing patch for CVE-2017-15047 with an upstream-blessed version that covers another case.
  • redisearch (0.21.3-5) — Initial release.
  • docbook2man (2.0.0-40) — Correct spelling mistakes in binaries and other misc packaging tidying.
  • python-redis (2.10.6-1) — New upstream release.
  • bfs (1.1.3-1) — New upstream release.

FTP Team


As a Debian FTP assistant I ACCEPTed 103 packages: amcheck, argagg, binutils, blockui, bro-pkg, chkservice, citus, django-axes, docker-containerd, doctest, dtkwidget, duktape, feed2exec, fontforge, fonttools, gcc-8, gcc-8-cross, generator-scripting-language, gitgraph.js, haskell-uri-encode, hoel, iniparser, its, jquery-areyousure, kodi, libcatmandu-mods-perl, libcatmandu-template-perl, libcatmandu-xml-perl, libcatmandu-xsd-perl, libcode-tidyall-plugin-sortlines-naturally-perl, libgdamm5.0, libinfinity, libmods-record-perl, libreoffice-dictionaries, libset-intervaltree-perl, libsodium, linux, linux-grsec, ltsp-manager, lxqt-themes, mailman3-core, measurement-kit, mini-buildd, musescore, node-babel, node-babel-eslint, node-babel-loader, node-babel-plugin-add-module-exports, node-babel-plugin-transform-define, node-gulp-newer, node-regenerate-unicode-properties, node-regexpu-core, node-regjsparser, node-unicode-data, node-unicode-loose-match, openjdk-9, orafce, pgaudit, pgsql-ogr-fdw, pk4, postgresql-mysql-fdw, powa-archivist, python-azure-devtools, python-colormap, python-darkslide, python-dotenv, python-karborclient, python-logfury, python-lupa, python-marshmallow, python-murano-pkg-check, python-octaviaclient, python-pathspec, python-pgpy, python-pydub, python-randomize, python-sabyenc, python-searchlightclient, python-stestr, python-subunit2sql, python-twitter, python-utils, python-wsgilog, r-cran-bindr, r-cran-desc, r-cran-hms, r-cran-readstata13, r-cran-rprojroot, r-cran-wikidatar, r-cran-wikipedir, r-cran-wikitaxa, repmgr, requests-file, resteasy3.0, sdl-kitchensink, stardicter, systemd-el, thunderbird, tomcat8.0, uwsgi-plugin-luajit, uwsgi-plugin-mongo, uwsgi-plugin-php & uwsgi-plugin-v8.

I additionally filed 3 RC bugs against packages that had incomplete debian/copyright files against: fonttools, generator-scripting-language & libsodium.




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