As per the documentation dist-hook is supposed to execute before the tar/gzip, but there are few other commands
that execute after dist-hook that effectively nullifies the effect of dist-hook

automake --version
automake (GNU automake) 1.11.1


autoconf --version
autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.63

dist-hook:
    $(shell find $(distdir) -name openhpi.conf -exec chmod 600 "{}" ";")

Here's the output of the make portion that is relevant


make  \
          top_distdir="openhpi-3.2.1" distdir="openhpi-3.2.1" \
          dist-hook
make[1]: Entering directory `/root/mohan/openhpi/openhpi_3.2.x_latest_to_compile'
make[1]: Nothing to be done for `dist-hook'.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/root/mohan/openhpi/openhpi_3.2.x_latest_to_compile'
test -n "" \
        || find "openhpi-3.2.1" -type d ! -perm -755 \
                -exec chmod u+rwx,go+rx {} \; -o \
          ! -type d ! -perm -444 -links 1 -exec chmod a+r {} \; -o \
          ! -type d ! -perm -400 -exec chmod a+r {} \; -o \
          ! -type d ! -perm -444 -exec /bin/sh /root/mohan/openhpi/openhpi_3.2.x_latest_to_compile/install-sh -c -m a+r {} {} \; \
        || chmod -R a+r "openhpi-3.2.1"
tardir=openhpi-3.2.1 && /bin/sh /root/mohan/openhpi/openhpi_3.2.x_latest_to_compile/missing --run tar chof - "$tardir" | GZIP=--best gzip -c >openhpi-3.2.1.tar.gz
{ test ! -d "openhpi-3.2.1" || { find "openhpi-3.2.1" -type d ! -perm -200 -exec chmod u+w {} ';' && rm -fr "openhpi-3.2.1"; }; }


Problem
I want to make sure a file in the distribution is set to 600 or 400 permission. But that is not happening as read permission is turned on for all the files after dist-hook, but before GZIP.