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Interesting, but the commit that introduced the malicious changes wouldn't be signed by the alleged author's key.

Also I'd trust anyone who denies adding a backdoor like this. Why would anyone do this with their name attached to the change?

What you'd actually do is change the author to "Anonymous Coward <nobody@android.com>" ;)

https://android.googlesource.com/platform/packages/apps/Glob...

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In the given scenario, the author signs tags and not commits. So the malicious commit wouldn't be signed at all because no commits are signed, and therefore nothing would look out of place.

The article is arguing that only signing tags is insufficient, and that you should sign every commit individually to prevent this scenario.

Hah. That is an interesting commit! Definitely a smart move if you're pushing an unpopular change to an open source project.

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