Subject: [bug#42048] [PATCH 0/6] Authenticated channels for everyone!

From: Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Jul 2020 17:54:08 +0200

zimoun <[email-masked]> skribis:

> On Wed, 01 Jul 2020 at 14:17, Ludovic Courtès <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> But of course, the new ‘introduction’ field of <channel> won’t be
>> recognized by older Guix versions.  In that case, you should use the
>> output of ‘guix describe -f channels-sans-intro’ as I wrote in the
>> manual.
>
> Older Guix versions means the Scheme lib and not Inferiors, right?
>
> I mean, if I run using a Guix post-'introduction' "guix describe -f
> channels", then I can run with another Guix post-'introduction' "guix
> time-machine -C channels.scm", everything is fine.
>
> However, I cannot use this post-'introduction' channels.scm file with a
> pre-'introduction' Guix and "guix time-machine -C channels.scm" fails,
> right? 

Yup!

> Well, if now Eve has the control of an authorized key (for example the
> Brett's one) then you cannot distinguish between past valid signatures
> to current malicious ones, even if the key is revoked, right?

Revocation in the OpenPGP sense doesn’t not matter at all.  What matters
is whether the key is in ‘.guix-authorizations’.  If we remove if from
there in commit X, then any commit descending from X that is signed by
that key will be rejected.  Past commits (ancestors of X) signed by that
key are still considered authentic.

Ludo’.