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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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WARNING: Malicious code in current pre-release & testing versions/variants: F40 and rawhide affected - users of F40/rawhide need to respond (discussion.fedoraproject.org)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

According to this post, the person involved exposed a different name at one point.

https://boehs.org/node/everything-i-know-about-the-xz-backdoor

Cheong is not a Pingyin name. It uses Romanization instead. Assuming that this isn't a false trail (unlikely, why would you expose a fake name once instead of using it all the time?) that cuts out China (Mainland) and Singapore which use the Pingyin system. Or somebody has a time machine and grabbed this guy before 1956.

Likely sources of the name would be a country/Chinese administrative zone that uses Chinese and Romanization. Which gives us Taiwan, Macau, or Hong Kong, all of which are in GMT+8. Note that two of these are technically under PRC control.

Realistically I feel this is just a rogue attacker instead of a nation state. The probability of China 1. Hiring someone from these specific regions 2. Exposing a non-pinying full name once on purpose is extremely low. Why bother with this when you have plenty of graduates from Tsinghua in Beijing? Especially after so many people desperate for jobs after COVID.