security-wg VS cargo-vet

As I was working on an open source security project, I put pressure on myself to be ready. Also as a member of the Node.js Security WG I thought it was an interesting topic and that I was probably not the only one who was worried about not being up to the task 😖.

We began the discussion in this issue, and here you can find the meeting notes:

Node.js is building something very similar: Permission Model https://github.com/nodejs/security-wg/issues/791

deprecated Node.js Security WG Database

Node.js Security Working Group

For supply chain security, you might be interested in cargo-vet[0], a tool for coordinating and requiring manual reviews of open source dependencies. Both Mozilla and Google[1] have started publishing their audits.toml files, which are a machine-readable file describing what source code reviews they have performed.

[0] https://github.com/mozilla/cargo-vet

[1] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2023/05/open-sourcing-our-...

there is also cargo-vet for manual auditing of the source code of the crates, which is not something that can be done automatically. Quite a few companies and orgs use it now like Mozilla, Google, Bytecode Alliance, us (Embark Studios), ISRG, zcash etc. And believe its usage will expand significantly going forward with corporate users and security sensitive projects/orgs.

If you don't know the author, signatures do nothing. Anybody can sign their package with some key. Even if you could check the author's identity, that still does very little for you, unless you know them personally.

It makes a lot more sense to use cryptography to verify that releases are not malicious directly. Tools like crev [1], vouch [2], and cargo-vet [3] allow you to trust your colleagues or specific people to review packages before you install them. That way you don't have to trust their authors or package repositories at all.

That seems like a much more viable path forward than expecting package repositories to audit packages or trying to assign trust onto random developers.

[1]: https://github.com/crev-dev/crev [2]: https://github.com/vouch-dev/vouch [3]: https://github.com/mozilla/cargo-vet

The other approach is https://github.com/mozilla/cargo-vet

cargo crev and cargo vet for reviewing dependencies and using reviewed versions

Since the audits are designed to be used at a per project level and contributed directly into the VCS repo (allowing you to using git signing for example) I don't quite understand what additional off-line cryptographic signatures are required here (considering that Cargo's lockfiles already contain a hash of the crate which would prevent the project from getting an altered version of a crate accidentally and that SHA validation is being considered as part of vet as well https://github.com/mozilla/cargo-vet/issues/116).