[valgaze]

Hmm:

“F-Droid is not hosted in just any data center where commodity hardware is managed by some unknown staff. We worked out a special arrangement so that this server is physically held by a long time contributor with a proven track record of securely hosting services. We can control it remotely, we know exactly where it is, and we know who has access.”

[kube-system]

Yikes. They don't need a "special arrangement" for those requirements. This is the bare minimum at many professionally run colocation data centers. There is not a security requirement that can't be met by a data center -- being secure to customer requirements is a critical part of their business.

Maybe the person who wrote that is only familiar with web hosting services or colo-by-the-rack-unit type services where remote-hands services are more commonly relied on. But they don't need to use these services. They can easily get a locked cabinet (or even just a 1/4 cabinet) only they could access.

[fruitworks]

A super duper secure locked cabinet acessible only to them or anyone with a bolt cutter.

You want to host servers on your own hardare? Uh yikes. Let's unpack this. As a certified AWS Kubernetes professional time & money waster, I can say with authority that this goes against professional standards (?) and is therefore not a good look. Furthermore, I can confirm that this isn't it chief.

[kube-system]

Colocation is when you use your own hardware. That's what the word means.

And you're not going to even get close to the cabinet in a data center with a set of bolt cutters. But even if you did, you brought the wrong tool, because they're not padlocked.

[toast0]

Bolt cutters will probably cut through the cabinet door or side if you can find a spot to get them started and you have a lot of time.

Otoh, maybe you've got a cabinet in a DC with very secure locks from europe.... But all are keyed alike. Whoops.

A drill would be easier to bring in (especially if it just looks like a power screwdriver) and probably get in faster though. Drill around the locks/hinges until the door wiggles off.

[kube-system]

I'd go with a drill -- but I'm not sure what possible threat vector would have access to the cabinet who would be able to get to the cabinet in any decent data center.

[fragmede]

Because it's a secret, we don't know if it's mom's basement where the door doesn't really lock anyways, just pull it real hard, or if it's at Uncle Joey's with the compound and the man trap and laser sensors he bought at government auction through a buddy who really actually works at the CIA.

[IshKebab]

"F-Droid is not hosted in a data centre with proper procedures, access controls, and people whose jobs are on the line. Instead it's in some guy's bedroom."

Not reassuring.

[PaulKeeble]

It could just be a colo, there are still plenty of data centres around the globe that will sell you a space in a shared rack with a certain power density per U of space. The list of people who can access that shared locked rack is likely a known quantity with most such organisations and I know in the past we had some details of the people who were responsible for it

[TomatoCo]

For some reason I'm reading emphasis on "just any" in their statement "not hosted in just any data center". I feel like it's at a data center run by this long term contributor.

[TomatoCo]

In some respects, having your entire reputation on the line matters just as much. And sure, someone might have a server cage in their residence, or maybe they run their own small business and it's there. But the vagueness is troubling, I agree.

A picture of the "living conditions" for the server would go a long way.

[a3w]

Depends on the thread model, which one is worse.

State actor? Gets into data centre, or has to break into a privately owned apartment.

Criminal/3rd party state intelligence service? Could get into both, at a risk or with blackmail, threats, or violence.

Dumb accidents? Well, all buildings can burn or have an power outage.

[Aurornis]

> State actor? Gets into data centre, or has to break into a privately owned apartment.

I don’t think a state actor would actually break in to either in this case, but if they did then breaking into the private apartment would be a dream come true. Breaking into a data center requires coordination and ensuring a lot of people with access and visibility stay quiet. Breaking into someone’s apartment means waiting until they’re away from the premises for a while and then going in.

Getting a warrant for a private residence also would likely give them access to all electronic devices there as no 3rd party is keeping billing records of which hardware is used for the service.

> Dumb accidents? Well, all buildings can burn or have an power outage.

Data centers are built with redundant network connectivity, backup power, and fire suppression. Accidents can happen at both, but that’s not the question. The question is their relative frequency, which is where the data center is far superior.

[pbhjpbhj]

>Breaking into a data center requires coordination and ensuring a lot of people with access and visibility stay quiet

Or just a warrant and a phone call to set up remote access? In the UK under RIPA you might not even need a warrant. In USA you can probably bribe someone to get a National Security Letter issued.

Depending on the sympathies of the hosting company's management you might be able to get access with promises.

I dare say F-Droid trust their friends/colleagues more than they trust randos at a hosting company.

As an F-Droid user, I think I might too? It's a tough call.

[Calzifer]

> Data centers are built with redundant network connectivity, backup power, and fire suppression. [...] The question is their relative frequency, which is where the data center is far superior.

Well, I remember one incident were a 'professional' data center burned down including the backups.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OVHcloud#Incidents

I know no such incident for some basement hosting.

Doesn't mean much. I'm just a bit surprised so many people are worried because of the server location and no one had mentioned yet the quite outstanding OVH incident.

[arjie]

I'm not going to pretend datacenters are magical places immune to damage. I worked at a company where the 630 Third Street datacenter couldn't keep temperatures stable during a San Francisco heatwave and the Okex crypto exchange has experienced downtime because the Alibaba Zone C datacenter their matching engine is on experienced A/C failure. So it's not all magic, but if you didn't encounter home-lab failure it's because you did not sample the population appropriately.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/wvqxs7/my_homelab_...

I don't have a bone to pick here. If F-Droid wants to free-ball it I think that's fine. You can usually run things for max cheap by just sticking them on a residential Google Fiber line in one of the cheap power states and then just making sure your software can quickly be deployed elsewhere in times of outage. It's not a huge deal unless you need always-on.

But the arguments being made here are not correct.

[Bridged7756]

Surely "Juan's home server in basement burns down" would make the headlines. You're totally right.

[tcfhgj]

> The question is their relative frequency, which is where the data center is far superior.

as a year long f-droid user I can't complain

[u8080]

>I don’t think a state actor would actually break in to either in this case

Read Jabber.ru Hetzner accident: https://notes.valdikss.org.ru/jabber.ru-mitm/

[pwndByDeath]

I think there are countless examples of worse failures by organisations that meet your criteria for far more valuable assets than some free apps.

[ugh123]

The 'cloud' has come full circle

[gpm]

Eh...

The set of people who can maliciously modify it is the people who run f-droid, instead of the cloud provider and the people who run f-droid.

It'd be nice if we didn't have to trust the people who run f-droid, but given we do I see an argument that it's better for them to run the hardware so we only have to trust them and not someone else as well.

[lrvick]

You actually do not have to trust the people who run f-droid for those apps whose maintainers enroll in reproducible builds and multi-party signing, which only f-droid supports unlike any alternatives.

[gpm]

That looks cool, which might just be the point of your comment, but I don't think it actually changes the argument here.

You still have to trust the app store to some extent. On first use, you're trusting f-droid to give you the copy of the app with appropriate signatures. Running in someone else's data-center still means you need to trust that data-center plus the people setting up the app store, instead of just the app store. It's just a breach of trust is less consequential since the attacker needs to catch the first install (of apps that even use that technology).

[lrvick]

F-droid makes the most sense when shipped as the system appstore, along with pinned CA keychains as Calyxos did. Ideally f-droid was compiled from source and validated by the rom devs.

The F-droid app itself can then verify signatures from both third party developers and first party builds on an f-droid machine.

For all its faults (of which there are many) it is still a leaps and bounds better trust story than say Google Play. Developers can only publish code, and optional signatures, but not binaries.

Combine that with distributed reproducible builds with signed evidence validated by the app and you end up not having to trust anything but the f-droid app itself on your device.

[gpm]

None of this mitigates the fact that apriori you don't know if you're being served the same package manifest/packages as everyone else - and as such you don't know how many signatures any given package you are installing should have.

Yes, theoretically you can personally rebuild every package and check hashes or whatever, but that's preventative steps that no reasonable threat model assumes you are doing.

[imiric]

Why have we normalized "app stores" that build software whose authors likely already provide packages of?

I've been using Obtainium more recently, and the idea is simple: a friendly UI that pulls packages directly from the original source. If I already trust the authors with the source code, then I'm inclined to trust them to provide safe binaries for me to use. Involving a middleman is just asking for trouble.

App stores should only be distributors of binaries uploaded and signed by the original authors. When they're also maintainers, it not only significantly increases their operational burden, but requires an additional layer of trust from users.

[ejj28]

The cloud isn't the only other option, they could still own and run their own hardware but do it in a proper colocation datacenter.

[skiing_crawling]

I never questioned or thought twice about F-Droid's trustworthiness until I read that. It makes it sound like a very amateurish operation.

I had passively assumed something like this would be a Cloud VM + DB + buckets. The "hardware upgrade" they are talking about would have been a couple clicks to change the VM type, a total nothingburger. Now I can only imagine a janky setup in some random (to me) guy's closet.

In any case, I'm more curious to know exactly what kind hardware is required for F-Droid, they didn't mention any specifics about CPU, Memory, Storage etc.

[AndrewDucker]

For a single server why would you use cloud services rather than go the self-owned route?

[skiing_crawling]

A "single server" covers a pretty large range of scale, its more about how F-droid is used and perceived. Package repos are infrastructure, and reliability is important. A server behind someone's TV is much more susceptible to power outages, network issues, accidents, and tampering. Again, I don't know that's the case since they didn't really say anything specific.

> not hosted in just any data center where commodity hardware is managed by some unknown staff

I took this to mean it's not in a colo facility either, assumed it mean't someone's home, AKA residential power and internet.

[secabeen]

The F-Droid repos are provided by redundant mirrors: https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Running_a_Mirror/

If this is the hidden master server that only the mirrors talk to, then it's redundancy is largely irrelevant. Yes, if it's down, new packages can't be uploaded, but that doesn't affect downloads at all. We also know nothing about the backup setup they have.

A lot depends on the threat model they're operating under. If state-level actors and supply chain attacks are the primary threats, they may be better off having their system under the control of a few trusted contributors versus a large corporation that they have little to no influence over.

[m0dest]

Even if it's just the build server, it's really hard to defend just having 1 physical server for a project that aspires to be a core part of the software distribution infrastructure for thousands of users.

The build server going down means that no one's app can be updated, even for critical security updates.

For something that important, they should aspire to 99.999% ("five nines of") reliability. With a single physical server, achieving five nines over a long period of time usually means that you were both lucky (no hardware failures other than redundant storage) and probably irresponsible (applied kernel updates infrequently - even if only on the hypervisor level).

Now... 2 servers in 2 different basements? That could achieve five nines ;)

[AndrewDucker]

Ah. I took "not just any data center" to mean "in a specific co-location facility where they trust the person responsible for it".

I agree that "behind someone's TV" would be a terrible idea.

[lrvick]

> It makes it sound like a very amateurish operation.

Wait until you find out how every major Linux distributions and software that powers the internet is maintained. It is all a wildly under-funded shit show, and yet we do it anyway because letting the corpos run it all is even worse.

[kube-system]

What do you mean by "major distribution"?

e.g. AS41231 has upstreams with Cogent, HE, Lumen, etc... they're definitely not running a shoestring operation in a basement. https://bgp.tools/as/41231

[lrvick]

Yet most distros have maintainers build and sign their own package recipes and/or artifacts on their own random home workstations infected with who knows what so the trust is distributed (but not decentralized) which is the worst of all worlds. And that is for the ones that bother with maintainer signing at all, as distros like nix and alpine fully skip caring about bare minimum supply chain security.

Some distros do build on a centralized machine, but almost always one many maintainers have access to from their workstations, so once again any single compromised home computer backdoors everything.

The trust model of the linux distros that power most servers on the internet is totally yolo, without the funding to even approach doing build and release right, let alone code review. One compromised maintainer workstation burns it all to the ground.

Sorry if this ruins anyones rosy worldview. The internet is fragile as hell, and one bored teen away from another slammer-worm style meltdown.

Relevant context: I founded stagex exactly because no previous Linux distribution has a decentralized trust story appropriate for production use hosting public internet services.

Once you decentralize supply chain trust then the question of "which place and people people do we trust for the one holy server" totally goes away.

[goodpoint]

This is 100% false.

[lrvick]

Once supply chain attacks enter your threat model, you suddenly realize that the entire internet breaks if any one of a few hundred volunteer owned home computers are compromised.

Fixing this requires universal reproducible builds redundantly built and signed by independently controlled hardware. Once you have that then you no longer have single points of failure so centralized high security colo cost becomes a moot issue.