Auto-Updates - Proactive or Begging for Abuse?

narzy asks: "To me one of the most important steps to keeping a computer secure is keeping the systems software up to date. The problem I run in to is that more and more of the applications in everyday use are web enabled in some context or another, making them high targets for attack and exploitation. I am beginning to find it difficult to keep clients computers completely up to date. I find that applications that have an auto update such as my anti-virus Nod32 which updates every day on its own a real blessing. It's a feature that is an option but and option that I personally wish was in a lot more software. Windows has this feature (so does Linux if you want it to) however in the case of Windows it's not exactly all that consistent. Unfortunately it opens another can of worms that isn't so enjoyable that being companies who abuse such a system for advertising purposes, modifying the software in such a way to reduce or change its functionality either because of internal decisions or external pressures from 3rd parties, compromise and abuse of the server the company uses to distribute the updates. But is it worth the added risk to know that 95%+ of the time your software is up to date? It's not a cure all but is it or is it not better then a reactive approach?"

Comments

apt-secure, don't let packages upgrade themselves

[ijones]

"Apt-Secure" has a nice sense of "which package sources are trusted". That means, APT maintains a list of places to get packages from. Some of these sources are trusted, and their packages can be cryptographically verified to be truly from those sources.

If there's a new version of a package from an "untrusted" source, it'll ask you if you're sure you want to upgrade that package.

I think it's silly to have package go and upgrade themselves, especially where each package has it's own way to perform the upgrade, and you have to trust each vendor's security implementation (instead of a single central one). A bunch of packages running off and upgrading themselves, each with its own security model (if any) is a great way to open yourself up to a man-in-the-middle attack several times a day. The OS should handle this in a consistent, secure way that the administrator can understand.

peace,

isaac