TUF (The Update Framework) helps developers secure their new or existing software update systems. Software update systems are vulnerable to many known attacks, including those that can result in clients being compromised or crashed. TUF helps solve this problem by providing a flexible security framework that can be added to software updaters.
Generally, a software update system is an application (or part of an application) running on a client system that obtains and installs software. This can include updates to software that is already installed or even completely new software.
Three major classes of software update systems are:
-
Application updaters which are used by applications use to update themselves. For example, Firefox updates itself through its own application updater.
-
Library package managers such as those offered by many programming languages for installing additional libraries. These are systems such as Python's pip/easy_install + PyPI, Perl's CPAN, Ruby's Gems, and PHP's PEAR.
-
System package managers used by operating systems to update and install all of the software on a client system. Debian's APT, Red Hat's YUM, and openSUSE's YaST are examples of these.
There are literally thousands of different software update systems in common use today. (In fact the average Windows user has about two dozen different software updaters on their machine!)
We are building a library that can be universally (and in most cases transparently) used to secure software update systems.