Re: Notes on extensions.gnome.org security

[Stef Walter <stefw collabora co uk>]

On 08/31/2011 11:16 PM, Jasper St. Pierre wrote:
> Right now you pass the plugin an URL to a "manifest file", so it's not
> hardcoded to seek out the URL based on extensions.gnome.org. The idea
> here was that if we needed to offload the servers with the extension
> data to a CDN, we wouldn't have to make the users upgrade their
> distributions.

It seems to me either you have to:

 a) limit extensions from downloading from a known encrypted source
    (extensions.gnome.org). This precludes putting parts of the
    extension on other locations like a CDN.

 b) cryptographically sign the extensions (and all data), this allows
    you to place the extension and its parts on CDNs.

As Alan brought up, option b with keys not directly located on 
extensions.gnome.org also has a good security story when it comes to 
hacks on the web server.

Cheers,

Stef