apt-secure man page on Hurd

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APT-SECURE(8)			      APT			 APT-SECURE(8)

NAME
       apt-secure - Archive authentication support for APT

DESCRIPTION
       Starting with version 0.6, apt contains code that does signature
       checking of the Release file for all archives. This ensures that
       packages in the archive can't be modified by people who have no access
       to the Release file signing key.

       If a package comes from a archive without a signature, or with a
       signature that apt does not have a key for, that package is considered
       untrusted, and installing it will result in a big warning.  apt-get
       will currently only warn for unsigned archives; future releases might
       force all sources to be verified before downloading packages from them.

       The package frontends apt-get(8), aptitude(8) and synaptic(8) support
       this new authentication feature.

TRUSTED ARCHIVES
       The chain of trust from an apt archive to the end user is made up of
       several steps.  apt-secure is the last step in this chain; trusting an
       archive does not mean that you trust its packages not to contain
       malicious code, but means that you trust the archive maintainer. It's
       the archive maintainer's responsibility to ensure that the archive's
       integrity is preserved.

       apt-secure does not review signatures at a package level. If you
       require tools to do this you should look at debsig-verify and debsign
       (provided in the debsig-verify and devscripts packages respectively).

       The chain of trust in Debian starts when a maintainer uploads a new
       package or a new version of a package to the Debian archive. In order
       to become effective, this upload needs to be signed by a key contained
       in the Debian Maintainers keyring (available in the debian-keyring
       package). Maintainers' keys are signed by other maintainers following
       pre-established procedures to ensure the identity of the key holder.

       Once the uploaded package is verified and included in the archive, the
       maintainer signature is stripped off, and checksums of the package are
       computed and put in the Packages file. The checksums of all of the
       Packages files are then computed and put into the Release file. The
       Release file is then signed by the archive key for this Debian release,
       and distributed alongside the packages and the Packages files on Debian
       mirrors. The keys are in the Debian archive keyring available in the
       debian-archive-keyring package.

       End users can check the signature of the Release file, extract a
       checksum of a package from it and compare it with the checksum of the
       package they downloaded by hand - or rely on APT doing this
       automatically.

       Notice that this is distinct from checking signatures on a per package
       basis. It is designed to prevent two possible attacks:

       ·   Network "man in the middle" attacks. Without signature checking,
	   malicious agents can introduce themselves into the package download
	   process and provide malicious software either by controlling a
	   network element (router, switch, etc.) or by redirecting traffic to
	   a rogue server (through ARP or DNS spoofing attacks).

       ·   Mirror network compromise. Without signature checking, a malicious
	   agent can compromise a mirror host and modify the files in it to
	   propagate malicious software to all users downloading packages from
	   that host.

       However, it does not defend against a compromise of the Debian master
       server itself (which signs the packages) or against a compromise of the
       key used to sign the Release files. In any case, this mechanism can
       complement a per-package signature.

USER CONFIGURATION
       apt-key is the program that manages the list of keys used by apt. It
       can be used to add or remove keys, although an installation of this
       release will automatically contain the default Debian archive signing
       keys used in the Debian package repositories.

       In order to add a new key you need to first download it (you should
       make sure you are using a trusted communication channel when retrieving
       it), add it with apt-key and then run apt-get update so that apt can
       download and verify the InRelease or Release.gpg files from the
       archives you have configured.

ARCHIVE CONFIGURATION
       If you want to provide archive signatures in an archive under your
       maintenance you have to:

       ·   Create a toplevel Release file, if it does not exist already. You
	   can do this by running apt-ftparchive release (provided in
	   apt-utils).

       ·   Sign it. You can do this by running gpg --clearsign -o InRelease
	   Release and gpg -abs -o Release.gpg Release.

       ·   Publish the key fingerprint, that way your users will know what key
	   they need to import in order to authenticate the files in the
	   archive.

       Whenever the contents of the archive change (new packages are added or
       removed) the archive maintainer has to follow the first two steps
       outlined above.

SEE ALSO
       apt.conf(5), apt-get(8), sources.list(5), apt-key(8), apt-
       ftparchive(1), debsign(1)debsig-verify(1), gpg(1)

       For more background information you might want to review the Debian
       Security Infrastructure[1] chapter of the Securing Debian Manual
       (available also in the harden-doc package) and the Strong Distribution
       HOWTO[2] by V. Alex Brennen.

BUGS
       APT bug page[3]. If you wish to report a bug in APT, please see
       /usr/share/doc/debian/bug-reporting.txt or the reportbug(1) command.

AUTHOR
       APT was written by the APT team <apt@packages.debian.org>.

MANPAGE AUTHORS
       This man-page is based on the work of Javier Fernández-Sanguino Peña,
       Isaac Jones, Colin Walters, Florian Weimer and Michael Vogt.

AUTHORS
       Jason Gunthorpe

       APT team

NOTES
	1. Debian Security Infrastructure
	   http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/securing-debian-howto/ch7

	2. Strong Distribution HOWTO
	   http://www.cryptnet.net/fdp/crypto/strong_distro.html

	3. APT bug page
	   http://bugs.debian.org/src:apt

APT 0.9.14.2			 09 June 2012			 APT-SECURE(8)
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