this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
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GPG keys are hosted on separate websites not on the distro's website, and also replicated (there are multiple GPG key registries) and if you have previously used a GPG key you already have it.
So now let's see. With just checksum, the attacker that wants you to download their malware-riddled ISO just has to break into the distro's website and change the checksum in one place. If they managed to break in and change the ISO there's a good chance they can break in to change the checksum too.
On the other hand, if the distro publishes a GPG signature, the attacker would have to compromise all the GPG registries and may still fail if you already had the good key.
Even if they managed to do that, if the key is used to sign other downloads, that the attacker hasn't changed, now the signature check will start failing for those, alerting other people.
It's just a lot harder to falsify downloads signed with GPG than just checksums.