Apptainer: Lack of Digital Signature Hash Verification

Background

Apptainer is the container system for secure high-performance computing.

Description

The Go module “sif” version 2.8.0 and older, which is a statically linked dependency of Apptainer, does not verify that the hash algorithm(s) used are cryptographically secure when verifying digital signatures.

Impact

An image whose verification relies on a cryptographically insecure hash algorithm could be replaced, resulting in users using an image other than the one that was expected.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Apptainer users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-containers/apptainer-1.1.2"