Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default #2139

wata727 · 2022-08-06T09:13:18Z

Summary

Currently, the verification performed by cosign verify-blob --cert does not verify the certificate chain, so you cannot guarantee that the certificate was correctly issued by Fulcio. So you need to explicitly pass Fulcio's root certificate via the --cert-chain option.

cosign initialize
cat ~/.sigstore/root/targets/fulcio_intermediate_v1.crt.pem > fulcio_chained.crt.pem
echo >> fulcio_chained.crt.pem
cat ~/.sigstore/root/targets/fulcio.crt.pem >> fulcio_chained.crt.pem
echo >> fulcio_chained.crt.pem
cat ~/.sigstore/root/targets/fulcio_v1.crt.pem >> fulcio_chained.crt.pem

cosign verify-blob --cert checksum.txt.pem --cert-chanin fulcio_chained.crt.pem ...

However, this way of getting root certificates is not secure. Ideally, it should be retrieved by a TUF client. After discussing this matter in #2134, @haydentherapper says that there is room for changing the default behavior.

This PR will change the default behavior from not verifying the certificate chain if --cert-chain is not passed to verifying the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust getting by a TUF client.

Release Note

Changed the default behavior from not verifying the certificate chain if --cert-chain is not passed to verifying the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust getting by a TUF client.

Documentation

The description of the --certificate option needs to be changed.

wata727 · 2022-08-06T09:19:49Z

I have two things to discuss:

Should this change be followed by similar commands such as cosign verify?
Is there a good way to add tests for this implementation? verify_blob_test.go didn't seem to have any tests for verification.

Signed-off-by: Kazuma Watanabe <watassbass@gmail.com>

codecov-commenter · 2022-08-06T15:32:27Z

Codecov Report

Merging #2139 (b4887ea) into main (128f8fb) will decrease coverage by 0.05%.
The diff coverage is 0.00%.

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #2139      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   26.28%   26.23%   -0.06%     
==========================================
  Files         130      130              
  Lines        7602     7617      +15     
==========================================
  Hits         1998     1998              
- Misses       5347     5362      +15     
  Partials      257      257

Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
cmd/cosign/cli/options/certificate.go	`0.00% <0.00%> (ø)`
cmd/cosign/cli/verify/verify.go	`0.00% <0.00%> (ø)`
cmd/cosign/cli/verify/verify_attestation.go	`0.00% <0.00%> (ø)`
cmd/cosign/cli/verify/verify_blob.go	`9.72% <0.00%> (-0.16%)`	⬇️

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haydentherapper

The same changes need to be made in https://cs.github.com/sigstore/cosign/blob/c5fda01a8ff33ca981f45a9f13e7fb6bd2080b94/cmd/cosign/cli/verify/verify_attestation.go?q=org%3Asigstore+CheckCertificatePolicy#L141 and https://cs.github.com/sigstore/cosign/blob/95b74db89941e8ec85e768f639efd4d948db06cd/cmd/cosign/cli/verify/verify.go?q=org%3Asigstore+CheckCertificatePolicy#L162

cmd/cosign/cli/verify/verify_blob.go

haydentherapper · 2022-08-06T16:54:44Z

Testing is unfortunately a bit rough. Check out e2e_test.go, but it might be hard to fit in a test for this, especially with TUF. We may need a TODO.

haydentherapper · 2022-08-06T16:55:01Z

/hold, I want to give a bit more thought to this and will get back to you on Monday.

cc @znewman01

…default Signed-off-by: Kazuma Watanabe <watassbass@gmail.com>

…ust by default Signed-off-by: Kazuma Watanabe <watassbass@gmail.com>

wata727 · 2022-08-07T16:28:57Z

The same changes need to be made

Fixed eda267b

Testing is unfortunately a bit rough. Check out e2e_test.go, but it might be hard to fit in a test for this, especially with TUF. We may need a TODO.

Understood. I'll take a little deeper look at the e2e_test.go implementation.

znewman01 · 2022-08-08T21:54:27Z

Hey, thanks for this! (and thanks for looping me in, @haydentherapper)

I haven't looked too closely at the code but this change seems like much better/safer default behavior.

I just want to think through workarounds for anyone who was relying on the old behavior. The right thing to do in such a case is probably to provide the public key directly, rather than via a cert; this makes it much clearer what you're asking for. Maybe we should refer users to the step certificate key command? IIUC it should Just Work™

Was there anything specific you wanted my feedback on?

patflynn · 2022-08-09T00:30:32Z

I'm probably mis-interpreting this, but for cases where the user has signed a blob with a user provided custom key, why would we want to verify against the fulcio root?

haydentherapper · 2022-08-09T00:41:40Z

@znewman01 Just looking for a second opinion! Generally this looked good to me, beyond the potentially breaking change.

@patflynn One thought is a user is very unlikely to provide a certificate in that case (I think), they'd be providing a key. We've got a few options for providing verification material:

No key or cert - Either:
- Fetch the certificate+chain from OCI. Verify the certificate+chain against the TUF root
- Fetch the certificate from Rekor for blob signing. Extract the verification key. (I don't actually like this since Rekor is meant to be a witness to an event and not storage, but let's discuss that more in another issue) <-- Note that this doesn't verify the cert against a chain because previously Rekor didn't support uploading the full cert chain. This option is just kinda messy.
A key - Use the key to verify
A certificate+chain - Verify the chain, and extract the verification key from the cert. Don't verify against TUF.
A certificate w/o chain - Current behavior is to just extract the verification key. My question is, is anyone providing a certificate that's not from Fulcio in this case? If the vast majority of users provide a Fulcio certificate, then we should verify against the chain from TUF.

The workaround would either be extracting the key themselves (Like Zach mentioned) or providing the full certificate chain.

patflynn · 2022-08-09T00:49:27Z

@haydentherapper got it. that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

asraa · 2022-08-09T13:32:23Z

cmd/cosign/cli/options/certificate.go

@@ -37,7 +37,7 @@ var _ Interface = (*RekorOptions)(nil)
 // AddFlags implements Interface
 func (o *CertVerifyOptions) AddFlags(cmd *cobra.Command) {
 	cmd.Flags().StringVar(&o.Cert, "certificate", "",
-		"path to the public certificate")
+		"path to the public certificate. The certificate will be verified against the Fulcio roots if the --certificate-chain option is not passed.")


nit: Fulcio root provided in the TUF root?

I didn't mention it to TUF here because I have a concern about the description would be too long. If we should mention it, please let me know so I fix it.

haydentherapper · 2022-08-09T13:43:58Z

LGTM, just need to fix the failing test. Thanks!

dlorenc · 2022-08-09T15:51:38Z

The failure is unrelated and the fix is over here: sigstore/scaffolding#277

dlorenc · 2022-08-09T15:51:46Z

I'll merge while we wait for the fix.

wata727 mentioned this pull request Aug 6, 2022

How to get the Fulcio root certificate securely in verify-blob? #2134

Closed

Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default

ce81d79

Signed-off-by: Kazuma Watanabe <watassbass@gmail.com>

wata727 force-pushed the verify_cert_chain_by_default branch from d43c022 to ce81d79 Compare August 6, 2022 09:26

haydentherapper requested changes Aug 6, 2022

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cmd/cosign/cli/verify/verify_blob.go Show resolved Hide resolved

wata727 added 2 commits August 7, 2022 16:10

fixup! Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by …

eda267b

…default Signed-off-by: Kazuma Watanabe <watassbass@gmail.com>

fixup! fixup! Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root tr…

b4887ea

…ust by default Signed-off-by: Kazuma Watanabe <watassbass@gmail.com>

wata727 changed the title ~~verify-blob: Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default~~ Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default Aug 7, 2022

wata727 marked this pull request as ready for review August 7, 2022 16:31

asraa approved these changes Aug 9, 2022

View reviewed changes

dlorenc merged commit fdceee4 into sigstore:main Aug 9, 2022

github-actions bot added this to the v1.11.0 milestone Aug 9, 2022

wata727 deleted the verify_cert_chain_by_default branch August 10, 2022 11:59

cpanato mentioned this pull request Aug 16, 2022

fix oidc post-merge job #2164

Merged

wata727 mentioned this pull request Aug 20, 2022

Revert "Add a notice about verification of keyless signing" terraform-linters/tflint#1487

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Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default #2139

Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default #2139

wata727 commented Aug 6, 2022 •

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Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default #2139

Verify the certificate chain against the Fulcio root trust by default #2139

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wata727 commented Aug 6, 2022 • edited

Summary

Release Note

Documentation

wata727 commented Aug 6, 2022

codecov-commenter commented Aug 6, 2022 • edited

Codecov Report

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