I don't fully agree. It is still easier to hide a backdoor in (obfuscated) binary code than it is in (written-to-be-maintainable) source code. Config should ideally be included. And there are other code quality benefits of reproducible builds besides security (testing, deltas).
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Replying to @rene_mobile @fugueish and
Is it easier? The benefit of bugdoors isn't ease, it's that they're plausibly deniable, if you get caught, so what? You might even be able to convince people not to talk about it for months, and you can try again in a new patch, there's zero penalty.
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Replying to @taviso @rene_mobile and
There might be non-security benefits of reproducible builds to *vendors*, but I don't see any benefit to users of being able to reproduce them. This is just because promising there's no backdoors make no sense when bugdoors are just so perfect?
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Replying to @taviso @rene_mobile and
Fwiw I see benefits in reproducible builds to answer the question "is the binary on my machine built from this source"?
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Replying to @halvarflake @taviso and
even if you trust the vendor, reproducible builds make it easier for vendors to ship binary code without trusting their build systems.
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Replying to @julianor @halvarflake and
Sure, but there's no need to publish it, right? You can get more benefit from hiring someone to reproduce it for you and double checking your build server wasn't compromised. That way you *know* someone will check rather than just hoping the public will do it for you.
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Replying to @julianor @halvarflake and
Maybe, but you *have* to trust the vendor anyway, and if you don't trust them to tell the truth that they're checking the build server, then you can't trust them not to insert bugdoors... right?
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Replying to @taviso @halvarflake and
you always trust but instead of blind trust or trusting a single system you can trust independent entities with different incentives. You can trust a vendor but at the same time have a process to make it harder for a malicious member to insert a backdoor.
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I don't know what checking the build server means, you can't demonstrate a server is not compromised but you can verify independent systems produce the same output from the same input..somehow
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Checking the build server means hiring an auditor to verify the result matches, but not making the source and reproducible build seeds public.
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Replying to @taviso @halvarflake and
why would you do that if you can add a blockchain and build hash commitments to create economic incentive to verify binaries :-p
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