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Squatting and the effects of malware and poison images is my primary concern here.

One of the things the docker api has going for it is that it is hash based. Aside from the first time, it doesn’t seem far fetched for a docker api client to refuse or warn based on comparing the new download’s hash to the previous hash.

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Not a lot of people pull by hash; they pull by tag. Tags are not immutable, so the image I get from "python:3.11" today will almost certainly change due to security updates and I will be none the wiser.

I can see that. A human specifiable name is important.

My proposal is that each time an image is pulled, the hash is recorded and retained even if the underlying container image is removed. When the same image is pulled again, if the files change from the previous hash, either fail or warn the user.

I can see how pinning to a specific patch version is not a great idea and that "python:3.11" keeps people from pinning to an insecure version.

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