This is about [[!tails_ticket 5630]]. [[!toc levels=2]] # Why we want reproducible builds ## List of reasons why
* Allow independent verification that a build product matches what the source intended to produce ⇒ better resist attacks against build machines and developers (see for specific examples) ⇒ improves users' security, and allows developers to sleep better at night (as the incentive for an attacker to compromise developers' systems, or to compromise developers themselves, is lowered). In turn, this avoids the need to trust people (or software) who build the ISO we release, which in turn allows more people to get involved in release management work. * We would not have to upload the ISO image anymore when we do a release: we could instead build it both on our infrastructure (Jenkins) and locally, compare the outputs, and if they match publish the ISO built by Jenkins. Uploading an ISO can take many hours with some commonly found means of accessing the Internet, so removing the need to go through this step decreases our time to remediation for fixing security issues, and makes it easier for developers with poor access to the Internet to take care of a release. * Decrease the size of the IUKs ⇒ decrease the time needed by users to download upgrades ⇒ nicer UX, and makes it more likely that users upgrade in a timely manner instead of postponing to "when they have time". This depends e.g. on how we handle building with a fixed timestamp, and how we handle files metadata such as mtime when building an IUK. * Limit the scope of the QA work that we have to conduct before putting out a bugfix release that has a small delta at the source level ⇒ decrease time to remediation (compared to having to test everything every time), and we can release security upgrades more frequently (e.g. every time a DSA affects us) because it is cheaper. We are indeed able to assess the impact of a specific update, when we know that everything else won't change when we build an ISO that includes this update, and we can verify it for example with diffoscope. * No more bit flip that makes us waste precious hours during a release process (been there, seen that). * Increases confidence in the value of our continuous quality assurance processes: it tests something that is be closer to what lands into the released binaries. * Allow developers to use different build environments, while making sure that they produce the same binaries from the same source code. This is nice for developers (who get to pick their preferred tools), and also it helps ensure that we don't fully rely a golden trusted build environment, that must be absolutely never be compromised, and is very painful to upgrade. * Increases the trust that users, and anyone interested really, can put into our released build products (such as ISO images) and our development and release process. * Provides a baseline (system + configuration) that is more stable, and thus it is easier to maintain a delta against it, and easier to audit that delta in the ISO built from the modified source; e.g. another flavour of Tails we would support ourselves, or a rebranded Tails produced by some NGO, or a personal, custom built ISO that differs only by the addition of a few packages. * Might save disk space on mirrors, if some block-level de-duplication is done by the filesystem, and the compression algorithms we use to build images is stable enough in the situations we use it for. * Opens the door for cross-architecture building and verification of the build products, which: - decreases the risk that our build systems are all affected by the same architecture — or platform — specific security issue; - may allow us to support more architectures (e.g. [[!tails_ticket 10972 desc="ARM"]]), because we could do most our CI and QA on the fastest one. * Detect bugs, for example the ones provided on the [reproducible builds project's buy-in page]( (retrieved on 2015-02-16): "[[!debbug 773916 desc="a library had a different application binary interface for every build"]], [[!debbug 801855 desc="garbled strings due to encoding mismatch"]], [[!debbug 778486 desc="missing translations"]], or [[!debbug 778707 desc="changing dependencies"]]". * "The constraint of having to reflect about the build environment also helps developers to think about the relationship with external software or data providers. Relying on external sources with no backup plans might cause serious troubles in the long term" ([reproducible builds project's buy-in page](, 2015-02-16). * Faster development processes: e.g. when one knows for sure that build stage 1 will produce the same output given the same input, one can cache it and build only stages 2 to n. ## Draft
This draft needs to be updated. It was written in 2014, way before we came up with the previous list of advantages, or discussed this topic much. It was primarily meant to explain why we needed a [[!tails_ticket 5926 desc="freezable APT repository"]], as a first step towards reproducible builds.
Being free software is a necessary condition for tools to be trusted for their security. The only way for *security researchers* to know if a piece of software is trustworthy, is to audit its source code. But operating systems are delivered *to their users* in binary form that cannot be simply reverted back to their original source code. Of course, we provide ways for our users to strongly authenticate our binaries using HTTPS and OpenPGP signatures. But there is no technical way for security researchers to be sure that the binary delivered to the users was built from the original source code, because the process of transforming the source code into a binary is not deterministic: for various reasons, compiling the same source code twice produces different binaries. Several free software projects such as Tor, Debian, and Bitcoin are working on addressing this core issue of secure computing by making the build process deterministic using new, innovative techniques. Tails also wants to work towards reproducible builds, in order to enable security researchers to audit our software more easily and, as a consequence, to allow our users to put more trust in our software. # How we will make it happen ## Scope We want to provide a verifiable path from human readable Tails source code to the binary ISO images we publish. In other words, we want to enable anyone (given sufficient technical skills and hardware resources) to rebuild from source a given Tails release, in order to independently verify that it matches the ISO image we have published. We want our Quality Assurance (QA) and Continuous Integration infrastructure to build Tails ISO images in a reproducible way, as well: having this infrastructure test something that is be closer to the binaries we'll release increases the value of our QA processes. We want these properties to be easily maintainable on the long-term, so we want to work with our upstreams (mainly Debian) towards making as deterministic as possible the output of installing the software we get from them. As a welcome side-effect, the work towards Tails reproducible builds will most likely provide other great benefits, including: * for Tails users: quicker access to security fixes, faster download of Tails upgrades, improved software quality; * for Tails contributors: improved QA processes, cheaper release process; * for the Free Software community: easier to make builds of other projects reproducible. … but all these great potential outcomes depend on how exactly we implement reproducible builds, so they are not explicitly part of the scope of this project. ## Create and maintain suitable build environments There are two main strategies available in order to get software build reproducibly: always build it within the exact same context (e.g. operating software, build tools, locales, system clock, hardware architecture), or make the build process produce the same output regardless of the context it runs in. These strategies are not mutually exclusive, and for the sake of pragmatism, the other projects who are working on reproducible builds combine them. We pragmatically expect that we will need to do the same: we will "freeze" the build context just enough to eliminate most variations the build tools cannot cope with in a deterministic manner, and based on this we will modify the build process itself, to make it deterministic within this static build environment. Finding the right place to draw the line between these two strategies will be an interesting challenge. So, we will create means to regularly "freeze" our build environment, give a unique name to each such snapshot, and make them publicly available. And we will also teach our ISO build system to use the appropriate build environment depending on the branch or tag it is run on. We think that our Vagrant-based build system can be extended to support these new needs. Thankfully, we have just unleashed our "freezable APT repository", so it's totally doable to have a given frozen build environment use software repositories that are frozen as well, which simplifies a lot the creation and maintenance of frozen build environments: this avoids the case when a software upgrade inside that frozen build environment could modify it in a way that makes the build non-reproducible. In passing, let's note that the build environment we need to record is not limited a system disk image: various other things, such as the type of virtualized CPU this system is started on, the number of CPU cores, or the network configuration of the build virtual machine, also affect the output of an ISO build. Here as well, we'll need to draw a line between including such details into the description of the build environment, and making the build system's output independent of these variations. It would also be good to make it easy to recreate a build environment that's close to a given frozen one. It is out of the scope of this first iteration, but we are confident that we can implement the above in a way that makes it easy enough to add this property later. ## Implementation details After lots of research, discussion and experiments, we settled on the following implementation for our first iteration: * To freeze the build environment, we use APT snapshots in the same way we do in the Tails build system, by storing the serials for the various APT repositories in [[!tails_gitweb_dir vagrant/definitions/tails-builder/config/APT_snapshots.d/]]. * Only the debian-security APT source uses Debian's APT repository, so that we get security fixes. This will probably not influence the reproducibility of the ISO. This is done in the [[!tails_gitweb vagrant/provision/setup-tails-builder desc="Vagrant provisioning script"]]. * To ensure that changes in the Vagrant build system are still taken into account when using a basebox, we dynamically set the name of the basebox by including the short ID of the last commit in the `vagrant` directory in the related branch, as well as its date, in the name of the basebox. * We update the basebox APT snapshots serials [[at every Tails release|contribute/APT_repository/time-based_snapshots#bump-expiration-date-for-all-snapshots]]. * A new VM is created from the basebox for each build. After the build, the VM is destroyed ([[!tails_ticket 11980]] and [[!tails_ticket 11981]]). * The `keeprunning` build option can be used so that the VM is kept running and reused for subsequent builds of the same branch. * The VM encodes (in `/var/lib/vagrant_box_build_from`) the branch for which it has been started for. The ISO build aborts if the branch being built is not the same as the one that is encoded in this file. This prevents the reuse of a running VM to build another branch than the one it has been started for initially. * To ensure that the `apt-cacher-ng` cache is not lost when the VM is destroyed, it is stored in a dedicated virtual disk, and plugged into every new build VM. In our Jenkins setup we instead use an existing, external `apt-cacher-ng` in order to share the APT cache between build VMs and save disk space ([[!tails_ticket 11979]]). So we don't publish Vagrant baseboxes anymore: everyone building a Tails ISO image will instead build their own. Their resulting basebox doesn't have to be identical to anybody else's, but it is similar enough to produce ISO images that are identical to the ones published by the Tails project. **Edit:** It has now been released and is documented in the page about Tails [[Vagrant setup|contribute/build/vagrant-setup]]. ## Make Tails ISO build in a reproducible manner We will modify the Tails ISO build process itself, to make it deterministic within a given build environment. This includes quite a few technical challenges, and we expect it will be the most time-consuming part of this project. A number of those challenges are being worked on as part of the broader reproducible builds effort, and in particular in Debian, so we will benefit from existing analysis regarding sources of non-determinism and possible solutions. However, these efforts have been focused so far on building smaller pieces of software (particularly Debian packages), so there is little doubt we will hit new classes of problems while building a full operating system image. Let us mention a few issues we already have in mind: * Date and time: timestamps are the biggest source of reproducibility issues. In some cases we might be able to set the system clock to a predetermined value, in some others we need to have parts of the build process stop including timestamps, and then some additional post-processing should be enough to address all these issues. * Randomness: we have to deal with the fact that some random values are generated by the build system. In some cases we can simply seed a pseudo-random number generator with a predetermined value, but there may be cases when this would cause other problems. * Inputs from the network: we have already solved the biggest part of this problem thanks to our freezable APT repository, but there are more issues to address, as some Debian packages retrieve data from the network when they are installed. We already have a design in mind to solve this. * Debian packages' post-installation scripts: a lot of Debian packages include scripts that are run after the package is installed (typically to update databases, generate indices, etc.); in most cases, the output of these scripts is not deterministic. In many cases, we will be able to modify these scripts to make their output deterministic; but most likely, we will need a fair amount of post-processing to address at least some remaining issues. We expect we will discover, along the way, a number of other non-determinism problems we are not aware of yet. We are confident that we can address them, and that our work will benefit other projects that want to make their own builds reproducible (e.g. operating system images for the cloud and embedded systems, operating system installation media, other Live systems). ## Make it maintainable by pushing bits upstream Let's not kid ourselves: the initial proof-of-concept of a reproducible Tails ISO image build will probably rely on a lot of ad-hoc post-processing. But building reproducibly is a property that needs to be kept valid on the long term: it would be a waste of our time to do all the work we describe here if Tails ISO images stop building reproducibly, due to upstream software changes, a year or two later. So we need to look at this whole project through a long-term prism. In practical terms, this means that as many as possible, among the solutions we find to reproducibility issues, must end up _upstream_: even if we use post-processing as part of a tracer bullet approach, we will also work towards making as much of it as we can unneeded; for example, by making the output of post-installation scripts for Debian packages we ship deterministic. This is why no less than three Debian package maintainers are part of the team we have assembled for this project. This work will also benefit other projects that want to make their own builds reproducible, and even more so for Debian-based projects. ## Adjust our infrastructure accordingly We will adapt our server infrastructure to support this project. We will re-use the Vagrant-based build system we have created for developers: that build system will need to support reproducible builds anyway. There are two aspects to it. First of all, we will need to host a number of baseboxes that the isobuilders will generate before each build (if locally unavailable). This way they can re-use them rather than rebuild them each time. This means having enough disk space for the `vagrant.d` directory in the Jenkins user's home directory, as well as in the libvirt storage partition. Secondly, we will enable our existing QA processes to build ISO images: * when needed: in a fully reproducible manner (e.g. when building from a Git tag); * in the general case: in a way that minimizes the non-determinism of the output (we may want to use an up-to-date build environment instead of a frozen one). Still, the integration into our Jenkins setup will require us to go through a few additional steps, such as: * The virtual machines used as Jenkins "slaves" to build ISO images will need to store a number of different baseboxes. * We will use a rake task (`rake basebox:clean_old`) to clean obsolete baseboxes older than some time. Given we update the baseboxes at every Tails release, we've set this period to 4 months. * The Jenkins isobuilders will use the `forcecleanup` build option to ensure that the only copy of the baseboxes remaining on disk are the one in the `vagrant.d` directory, and every VM image in the libvirt storage pool is deleted, to avoid duplication of the basebox images. * For simplicity and security reasons, we will be using nested virtualization, i.e. Vagrant will start the desired ISO build environment in a virtual machine, all this inside a Jenkins "slave" virtual machine. We are already using nested virtualization a lot, so we are confident it can work out well, but still it brings two other problems. First, we have experienced reliability issues with nested virtualization in the past; these issues have been solved in the Linux kernel recently, but there may be more that our current use cases have not uncovered. And secondly, nested virtualization does not come for free: it has a cost in terms of performance and hardware resources, so in order for our continuous integration processes to keep up with our development cadence with a satisfying throughput, we might have to purchase and allocate more hardware to them. For estimates on hardware cost for Lizard ([[!tails_ticket 12002]]), see [[the dedicated page|blueprint/reproducible_builds/hardware]]. **Edit:** We already adapted our server infrastructure to support this project, integrating it in our [[Vagrant setup|contribute/build/vagrant-setup]] mentioned above. Specifics about how we deployed that in our Jenkins infra are [[documented here|contribute/working_together/roles/sysadmins/automated_builds_in_Jenkins]]. # Various ideas ## Debian (or nothing!) as trust anchor when building Tails Note: this goal should probably not be part of our first iteration of making Tails reproducible unless it turns out to be truly easy. But it can be good to keep this potential future goal in mind so we don't make decisions making it harder. A possible goal for us could be that, when building Tails, delegate the trust of the authenticity (here this means that a binary was built from the claimed source code) of the binaries used, from the Tails project (incl. infra) to the Debian project (incl. infra). This includes both binaries used when building Tails, and the binaries that end up inside the final Tails image. After all, the goal here is that looking at the source and building it should be enough to authenticate the images we ship. In our custom APT repo we ship packages that we build ourselves, so we need to make all of them build reproducibly for this goal to give any real confidence. That includes both packages installed inside the final Tails image (e.g. `tails-greeter`) and those used in the build process (e.g. our patched `live-build`). Note that this would also be nice to have in our QA process as a safe guard against contributors uploading a (knowingly or not) compromised package, i.e. the reviewer must be able to reproducibly build the same package. In our frozen APT suites we allegedly ship tons of packages imported straight from Debian. We should provide scripts that make it easy to verify that that is the case, perhaps by downloading the needed signed indexes/manifests etc from `` and doing the necessary checks. Or possibly even better: in each APT suite we can include a package containing all the proofs needed to verify the sources of all packages in the same suite, i.e. all `dists/.../Packages`, `dists/.../Release{,.pgp}` and APT repo signing keys used. That will make it easier to deal with non-Debian sources we use (e.g. ``) that don't necessarily archive historical APT repo state like `` does. Users would *only* need to authenticate all APT repo keys shipped in that package, or similar. Hopefully Debian provides a way to authenticate obsolete APT repo signing keys (e.g. by signing the old one with the new one) so at least that part can be scripted/automated. We also need to make it possible for users to generate the "static build environment" (see above) themselves so they do not have to rely on whatever binary blob (e.g. VM config + disk image) we distribute. As already mentioned above, it should be possible to to do this by leveraging our APT infrastructure's ability to freeze APT state, which then can be verified as described above. Whatever the users manage to produce does not need to be bit-by-bit identical with binary blob we distribute; it just must have the same properties for building Tails in a reproducible manner, which it should have provided the frozen APT state used during generation. (FWIW: given the experience we'll gather making Tails itself reproducible, making the generation of the "static build environment" reproducible is likely trivial in comparison. Having that would be nice, but, as pointed out above, not necessary for this goal.) Given all the above, users should be able to build Tails reproducibly while only having had to trust Debian for any binaries used in the process. Combine this with all Debian packages being reproducible at some point and we're basically down to the "Reflections on Trusting Trust" level when it comes to the "trust anchor", and close to reach reproducability nirvana. I guess the next step would be to rely less on a "static build environment" to support something like "Diverse Double-Compiling" to counter the "Trusting Trust" problem. :) # Jenkins See "Adjust our infrastructure accordingly" above. # Miscellaneous resources * * * * [[!tor_bug 3688]] * Making POT files more stable: debconf 1.5.58's changelog entry reads "Don't update po/debconf.pot unless doing so changes something other than the POT-Creation-Date header. The basic approach here is from gettext, though implemented a bit more simply since we can assume perl." * Building Debian Live reproducibly: - see commits authored by "lamby" in [Webconverger's Debian live configuration](, that include a script to clamp mtimes - [[!debbug 832998]] / [[!debbug 833118]] * Making ISO filesystem reproducible: - ask Chris Lamb (keywords: libisofs, libisoburn, xorriso) - [[!debbug 831379]] / [[!debbug 832689]] # Progress See [[our May report|news/report_2017_05]]. # Future work ## Integrate custom Debian package builds in the automated ISO builds
See discussion on [[!tails_ticket 6220]].
In our first iteration of reproducible ISO builds, we treat the content of the Debian package repositories used during the build process as trusted input. These repositories are of two kinds: * snapshots of the Debian archive, hosted on our own infrastructure, and signed server-side by our own key; Tails system administrators have the power to modify the content of these snapshots; an attacker who takes control of the relevant server can do the same; this will be improved later, and is outside of the scope of the work described in this section; * our [[custom APT repository|contribute/APT_repository/custom]], that stores our custom Debian packages; in addition to the people listed above (system administrators, successful attackers), Tails developers with commit rights can modify the content of this repository. The current standard process is that a developer builds a package locally, and uploads it to our custom APT repository. This entails a number of problems that we are going to discuss now. Here are some problems that come with our current handling of custom Debian packages: * Each developer needs to set up and maintain a local build environment for Debian packages. Such error-prone busywork is best avoided. * Our custom Debian packages may not build reproducibly across different developers' systems. So, one can't reproduce the build of a given ISO unless they use the exact packages that were uploaded to our custom APT repository. This brings the same [[set of problems|reproducible_builds#why]] that lead us to make our ISO image build reproducibly. For example, the state of our Git tree does not fully define what an ISO built from it will be, which makes reviewing and auditing harder than it should be. * Preparing a Tails release requires to build and upload a few packages by hand. This work is tedious and error-prone, and increases our time to mitigation for security issues. * Preparing a Tails release requires special credentials on our infrastructure, while we are moving towards Git access being enough. The way we have chosen to address these problems in the future is to have our custom Debian packages built automatically, in a reproducible manner, as part of building a Tails ISO image. There are a number of open questions: * Is it better to apply this build process change to _all_ ISO builds, or only to selected ones, e.g. actual releases? * Shall the Debian packages built as part of the ISO build be uploaded, stored and published somewhere? Or should they be considered as intermediate results we can just throw away after installing them? * If we upload these packages, how will they be verified by future builds using them? * How exactly shall these custom Debian packages be built? Can we do this inside the Vagrant build virtual machine? * What kind of quality assurance process will the built packages go through? Should it be done as part of the ISO build process, or instead on our continuous integration platform where the packages could be re-built (or uploaded) and checked? Part of this project will therefore be to research and discuss these topics with the affected parties, and come up with user stories and with a fitting design.