So You Want to Run Your Own Sigstore: Recommendations for a Secure Setup

The presentation discusses the use of private six store and transparency logs for artifact signing and key management in DevOps environments.

• Private six store can be used for artifact signing and key management in DevOps environments
• Identity-based certificates can be used for long-lived or managed keys
• Managed CAs should have appropriate access controls and policies for key rotation
• Operating a private instance of Fulsio from the open source repository is an option for managed CAs
• Certificate transparency logs are important for immutable issuance logs and verification of identities
• Private transparency logs can be used for cryptographic proofs of inclusion and exclusion
• Inclusion proofs allow for verification that an entry is in the tree
• Exclusion proofs allow for verification that an entry is not in the tree

The speaker mentioned that some organizations have already expressed interest in deploying private six store, but it is still a new area. They also emphasized the importance of trust and verification policies in determining whether the update framework is necessary. Additionally, the speaker discussed the need for transparency logs in the event of a CA compromise and the benefits of operating a private instance of Fulsio. They also explained the use of Merkle trees for cryptographic proofs and the importance of inclusion and exclusion proofs for verification.

Sigstore, an open-source standard for signing and verifying artifacts, provides free-to-use services that provide identity-based certificates and auditable signatures through a transparency log. These services work well for FOSS, giving maintainers the tooling needed to create signed builds. However, enterprise organizations may have additional needs that are not addressed by the public instances. This could include availability requirements such as regionalization, data residency requirements, privacy concerns with a public log, or requiring policy controls for admitting entries into a log. This talk will discuss motivations for operating private Sigstore services and expectations on the operators. The talk will discuss differences in the threat modeling between public and private instances. Finally, the talk will cover the requirements for operating private instances, including operating a root trust store and the necessary security properties of a private certificate authority and transparency log.