🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Bx8757.HoF@acsu.buffalo.edu> owens@acsu.buffalo.edu (Bill Owens) writes:
|   Without adding the overhead of a digital signature for each file which
|   tripwire is keeping track of, could the program perhaps be set up to
|   check a cryptographic signature on the entire database?  If the key
|   used to make the signature were kept secure, presumably by encrypting
|   it, then I think this setup would be equally secure.

I think this is insufficient.

Let's say you protected a key program with such a signature, and used
a shell that would check such signatures before executing the program.

I'm a baddie, with sufficient (but maybe temporary) privileges on your
system that I can change the bits in the program (or maybe I'm a
virus). I change what I want to change, subverting the program. Then I
find some other bits that I don't care about, and twiddle them until
the signature is right. If I can make that backward calculation either
directly or by trial-and-error in a reasonable time, then your
signature protection system is no protection.