Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility breaks encrypted SSH connections
arstechnica.com
Malicious code planted in xz Utils has been circulating for more than a month.

TL;DR there was a backdoor found in the XZ program. All major distros have been updated but it is recommended that you do a fresh install on systems that are exposed to the internet and that had the bad version of the program. Only upstream distros were affected.

  • herrcaptain
    112·
    8 months ago

    stable release of Arch Linux is also affected. That distribution, however, isn’t used in production systems.

    Don’t tell me how to live my life, Ars Technica.

      • herrcaptain
        43·
        8 months ago

        They mean a variant you use in a stable, like to run an automatic feeder for horses. According to Ars Technica, however, you are not to use it in your production stable.

        • oo1@kbin.social
          12·
          8 months ago

          Yeah, screw em. I use mine to produce lots of stuff.
          I try to avoid producing too much manure though.

          I think lots of IT people have an extremely limited experience of what it is to produce something.
          I mean if opening a ssh hole to the whole world to fuck with is an important part of what they consider “production” - well I’m not really into those types of websites.

    • Vegoon@feddit.de
      21·
      8 months ago

      I am not deep enough in it, but from the arch-announce mailinglist:

      From the upstream report [1]:

      openssh does not directly use liblzma. However debian and several other distributions patch openssh to support systemd notification, and libsystemd does depend on lzma.

      Arch does not directly link openssh to liblzma, and thus this attack vector is not possible. You can confirm this by issuing the following command:

      $(command -v sshd)

      However, out of an abundance of caution, we advise users to remove the malicious code from their system by upgrading either way. This is because other yet-to-be discovered methods to exploit the backdoor could exist.

      https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4

    • eveninghere@beehaw.org
      51·
      8 months ago

      Ars Technica sounds like a weirdo to me these days. Loves to attack big techs (although understandable), now adds this to their description of Arch.