Evaggelos Balaskas - System Engineer

I had the opportunity to participate on an Athen’s Hackerspace event with a dozen debian developers about the issue with reproducible distribution’s package builds.

I had never thought of this thing before and the presentation blown me away !

So here is the deal, if you download the latest openssl package from an archlinux mirror (want archlinux users will going to do):

# pacman -Sw openssl

What if we tried to build openssl by our selfs from the PKGBUILD file ?

# cd /var/abs/core/openssl

$ makepkg -cf
==> Making package: openssl 1.0.2.e-1 (Sun Dec  6 13:07:08 EET 2015)
==> Checking runtime dependencies...
==> Checking buildtime dependencies...
==> Retrieving sources...
  -> Found openssl-1.0.2e.tar.gz
  -> Found openssl-1.0.2e.tar.gz.asc
  -> Found no-rpath.patch
  -> Found ca-dir.patch
==> Validating source files with md5sums...
    openssl-1.0.2e.tar.gz ... Passed
    openssl-1.0.2e.tar.gz.asc ... Skipped
    no-rpath.patch ... Passed
    ca-dir.patch ... Passed
==> Verifying source file signatures with gpg...
    openssl-1.0.2e.tar.gz ... Passed
==> Extracting sources...
  -> Extracting openssl-1.0.2e.tar.gz with bsdtar
==> Starting prepare()...

...
...
...

==> Leaving fakeroot environment.
==> Finished making: openssl 1.0.2.e-1 (Sun Dec  6 13:11:06 EET 2015)
==> Cleaning up...

Let’s check the md5sum:

# md5sum /var/cache/pacman/pkg/openssl-1.0.2.e-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
         /var/abs/core/openssl/openssl-1.0.2.e-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz 

b555ac4294a2f39ef0caa19e21a28355  /var/cache/pacman/pkg/openssl-1.0.2.e-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
08755bad654f74b8a1c4c5386934aeea  /var/abs/core/openssl/openssl-1.0.2.e-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

wat ???

why isnt both files similar exactly the same ?

Let’s find out what are the differences between these two files by using diffoscope

diffoscope --html /tmp/openssl.html
    /var/cache/pacman/pkg/openssl-1.0.2.e-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
    /var/abs/core/openssl/openssl-1.0.2.e-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz

fire up an html browser and open /tmp/openssl.html

Read carefully the output, most of them are timestamps.
So what this fuzz is all about ?

There is a huge problem actually, we trust our distributions for privacy and security.

But what if governments have already compromised ftp mirrors or by MITM we have already installed a backdoor software?

That’s what core developers from major distributions are fighting as we speak, they are trying to engage more core developers and find a way to redistribute reproducible builds so that you can actually verify a package build on your PC.

Need to know more?

Click here: reproducible-builds

Can you help ?
take a look on diffoscope