this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2024
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Privacy

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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.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This was basically a lucky catch. Sadly makes you wonder how many backdoors like that have not been found (yet). Never the less the distro model of not feeding in upstream binaries directly is an important part of the multi-barrier security.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

One still could hide something in source code. I think we need to just be more security aware in general. Having source code isn't useful if someone deliberately put a security hole in it