bitcoin/contrib/verify-commits/README.md

Tooling for verification of PGP signed commits
----------------------------------------------

This is an incomplete work in progress, but currently includes a pre-push hook
script (`pre-push-hook.sh`) for maintainers to ensure that their own commits
are PGP signed (nearly always merge commits), as well as a script to verify
commits against a trusted keys list.


Using verify-commits.py safely
------------------------------

Remember that you can't use an untrusted script to verify itself. This means
that checking out code, then running `verify-commits.py` against `HEAD` is
_not_ safe, because the version of `verify-commits.py` that you just ran could
be backdoored. Instead, you need to use a trusted version of verify-commits
prior to checkout to make sure you're checking out only code signed by trusted
keys:

    git fetch origin && \
      ./contrib/verify-commits/verify-commits.py origin/master && \
      git checkout origin/master

Note that the above isn't a good UI/UX yet, and needs significant improvements
to make it more convenient and reduce the chance of errors; pull-reqs
improving this process would be much appreciated.

Configuration files
-------------------

* `trusted-git-root`: This file should contain a single git commit hash which is the first unsigned git commit (hence it is the "root of trust").
* `trusted-sha512-root-commit`: This file should contain a single git commit hash which is the first commit without a SHA512 root commitment.
* `trusted-keys`: This file should contain a \n-delimited list of all PGP fingerprints of authorized commit signers (primary, not subkeys).
* `allow-revsig-commits`: This file should contain a \n-delimited list of git commit hashes. See next section for more info.

Key expiry/revocation
---------------------

When a key (or subkey) which has signed old commits expires or is revoked,
verify-commits will start failing to verify all commits which were signed by
said key. In order to avoid bumping the root-of-trust `trusted-git-root`
file, individual commits which were signed by such a key can be added to the
`allow-revsig-commits` file. That way, the PGP signatures are still verified
but no new commits can be signed by any expired/revoked key. To easily build a
list of commits which need to be added, verify-commits.py can be edited to test
each commit with BITCOIN_VERIFY_COMMITS_ALLOW_REVSIG set to both 1 and 0, and
those which need it set to 1 printed.