in-toto: Providing farm-to-table guarantees for bits and bytes

Source: USENIX Security Authors: Santiago Torres-Arias, Hammad Afzali, Trishank Karthik Kuppusamy, Reza Curtmola, Justin Cappos Date: 2019

Core idea

Software supply chains become auditable when each step emits signed provenance metadata that can be verified against a declared layout of steps, actors, and thresholds.

Key claims

• Artifact lineage should be verified step by step rather than trusted in bulk.
• Thresholded attestations are useful for high-trust workflows.
• Provenance should attach to the produced artifact, not disappear into operations folklore.

Harness takeaway

Artifacts, approvals, and promotions in a multiplayer harness should carry signed provenance bundles. That turns trust into inspectable evidence of who did what under which workflow constraints.