Oh dear, the situation with the Arch Linux AUR got a fair bit worse since GamingOnLinux initially covered the malicious packages.
  • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
    7·
    10 hours ago

    AUR has never been a good idea. I don’t use it and this news proved me right.

    Does that mean a distro official package manager would be immune to infections? Of course not, but they do offer a more secure distribution system and build greater trust. Minimizing the chance of malware being spread through their means.

    Edit: If you have the knowledge and time to inspect the AUR packages you install, AUR might be good for you. I have none of these, that’s why I stick to my official distro packages (and sometimes also some flatpak but from official sources)

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
      1·
      2 minutes ago

      AUR has never been a good idea. I don’t use it and this news proved me right.

      But is Arch sufficiently complete without AUR packages? It is being criticized - and rightly so - that the magnificient Arch Wiki is full of references to AUR packages. That could in fact mislead new users.

      I am an happy Arch user… But I use it differently. I am running Debian stable on the hardware, which has all the drivers I need (after getting rid of NVidia graphics, which was just a mistake to buy). I use Debian for my work / office / productivity system, to read email, and so on.

      But for some stuff, I need newer software: For trying out new features or libraries (I am a developer). For testing out new window managers. Leisure programming. And so on. I use Arch for this. After a few years of dual booting (which caused occasional breakage), I settled on running Arch in a VM. Which works fine for me.

      And the last shift I am experiencing is that I use more and more the Guix package manager. The reason for this is that when one tries out a lot of things, and does only system upgrades for many years, the system becomes a bit untidy. Old packages, scripts, and configurations accumulate, and it is hard to get rid of it without breaking things. And there is so much stuff in software that, after all, turns out to be not such a good idea.

      Now, Guix solves that, because I have a temporary, deterministic environment for every programming project (just like a Python venv). And by this way, stuff does not contaminate the base system, and is garbage collected when it is not used any more.

      And, Guix has quite recent packages, similar to Arch.

      Now I use Arch less and less.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
      3·
      10 hours ago

      Minimizing the chance of malware being spread through their means.

      Right. And there is another angle to that: It is far easier to turn an ecosystem into a breeding ground for malware, than to get rid of it again. Once a system has a reputation to be easily hackable, it attracts malware like spoiled meat attracts flies.

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
    4·
    12 hours ago

    But why? Arch isn’t a server distro and their users usually know how to keep their secrets save. A FUD campaign?

  • tired_fedora@lemmy.ml
    897·
    2 hours ago

    TLDR: Open package repositories without some approval and oversight system, like AUR, will have even more problems in the future due to advanced coding AI and malicious foreign hackers.

    Edit: Please normalize TLDR’s on bot posts with just a link.

    Edit 2: I have been rightfully informed that this is not a bot post. I still think links should not be posted without a tiny abstract, one might say: a TLDR.

    I have also been informed that the text does not spell out “foreign”. This is correct. The text does say

    Not all of the packaging issues are as bad as the initial wave of trying to steal credentials, some are just adding ridiculous messages in Russian.

    This implies but does not establish the nationality of attackers. While Arch has contributors from all over the world, it is commonly cited as being a Canadian distribution (example, see below). https://distrowatch.com/table-mobile.php?distribution=arch

    • Excel@lemming.megumin.orgEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      AUR is still working as intended. It’s basically a public wiki of shell scripts, it was never intended to be secure in the first place. It has always been the user’s responsibility to review everything or avoid using it.

    • m532@lemmy.ml
      15·
      11 hours ago

      “Foreign hackers”

      Foreign to who?

      The article never said “foreign”, you made that up.

    • ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      14·
      16 hours ago

      I remember the good ole days when nobody cared enough about Linux to spread malware to it. Sigh. All these techbros that need to j their d to their power trips, dystopian surveillance, and shitty AI companies have probably started this. I even noticed a Linux hate sub on Lemmy. Imagine there being enough people forced to use Linux to create a hate community where they favor Microslop. Such strange times we live in.

    • Christian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      4 hours ago

      To be clear, -Qm displays installed packages not currently in the repositories. This will include AUR packages, but I avoid the AUR (except for davmail years ago) every once in a while I’ll run it just to check and sometimes it finds packages.

      When you install things from the main repos the dependencies get installed too, and if those dependencies are no longer needed they’ll be removed from the repositories. (I also have a bad habit of forgetting --asdeps when installing optional dependencies.) Sometimes they’ll conflict with a new dependency and pacman will ask to remove and replace them, but other times the functionality has become a part of an existing package, so with no conflict to prompt removal they’ll just sit unused on your install. If you haven’t tried -Qm in a long while you’ll probably find a few harmless currently-unused packages that were installed through the normal repos. (-Qdt will cover the other cases where dependencies remain in the repos but are now only needed for packages you don’t have installed.)

      Obviously -Qm will also show removed packages that aren’t dependencies, a few years back my preferred pdf viewer was removed from the repositories.

      -Qm will also find manually installed packages that aren’t in the AUR if you ever do that.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
      1·
      10 hours ago

      You can then search the list of compromised packages.

      Or just uninstall all AUR packages, instead of waiting for your ones to appear on that list, and having to re-install your full system to ensure its integrity.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
      42·
      10 hours ago

      And don’t forget that a system compromise means you need to re-install all in order to re-gain control of your system. Without the malware of course.

      Edit: I see downvotes… Some people don’t seem to understand why running malware permanently destroys a system’s integrity. I do not have more time today - can somebody explain for me why?

        • 5ymm3trY@discuss.tchncs.de
          3·
          14 hours ago

          I haven’t checked the scripts from OP, but i think there is a script that is provided by the CachyOS team that basically just contains a list of compromised packages and compares that to your pacman -Qm output. If it finds a match, it tells you that the compromized package X is on your system. That seems pretty reasonable.

          I get your point and as always, you should check the source of the script as well as the code inside of it. Never installing anything outside of official OS repositories is probably not an option for most people. There are always pros and cons. Like in my example maybe some OS maintainers know more about the affected packages than I do with a quick search. On the other hand, the script might be outdated because the number of packages changed a lot over the last few days.

          • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
            112·
            13 hours ago

            but i think there is a script that is provided by the CachyOS team that basically just contains a list of compromised packages and compares that to your pacman -Qm output.

            So, the CachyOS maintainers suggest running untrusted code?

            Noice. I don’t need to know more.

            • radamant@lemmy.worldEnglish
              9·
              11 hours ago

              In which way is it untrusted? If you use CachyOS, you use their binaries, that could contain anything at all inside of them. Do you draw the line at a shelll script you can read yourself?

            • 5ymm3trY@discuss.tchncs.de
              3·
              11 hours ago

              I don’t use CachyOS nor do I know anything about their team and I haven’t used the script either. My point was just that I would trust OS maintainers more than some random guy on the internet.

              I have checked again and it seems the script I was referring to was actually from a mod on their community forum. Not sure if this is a maintainer as well or not.

              My point still stands, if you trust the source and checked the code that nothing shady is going on, it is perfectly fine to run a script. Even if it is just an additional check after you cleaned it manually. Maybe you have missed something.

              • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
                2·
                9 hours ago

                You are right that the distribution as it provides binary code is a trust root. If you can’t trust them, you have nothing to stand on.

                I had the impression that CachyOS suggests to use AUR packages - maybe I am wrong here?

                And if CachyOS is (what I am just assuming) geared towards less technical users, can you really expect their average user to examine shell scripts from a forum post?

                How do their users even know that the post and its author is legitimate? Are they supposed to check PGP keys?

                You can call that paranoid but there is a reason why distributions use packkage signing, publish webs of trust, and why the Guix developers even worked hard to reduce the binary bootstrapping code for the distro down to 512 bytes - it is a consequence of the “trusting trust” problem posed by Ken Thompson that the more stuff is opaque, the more trust is needed.

                • 5ymm3trY@discuss.tchncs.de
                  2·
                  7 hours ago

                  I have no idea about the stance of CachyOS on AUR packages.

                  I totally agree with you, establishing trust is not an easy problem. I don’t expect the average joe to understand shell scripts. I would put myself in that categorie as well. This one however was simple enough that it seemed okay to me. If I don’t understand what’s going on in a script I am really careful and try to avoid it, if possible. I still wouldn’t consider them universally bad. For some things it is even the recommended install option. I vaguely remember some things in the Raspberry Pi universe ( IIRC this was even the case for Docker in the past).

                  There are multiple factors which can lead to trust. Maybe you know the CachyOS forum and how well it is maintained. How old is the account etc… But as you said, there are always risks. The account could be compromized as well. But most of that isn’t specific to shell scripts or Linux in general. You shouldn’t install an application from some shady website in Windows either.

                  What is your recommended way to deal with the current situation?

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      15 hours ago

      I had more aur packages than I thought but none in the list. Is this just known ones and there could be more?

      • bless@lemmy.ml
        3·
        12 hours ago

        Of course. A compromised package can’t be on the list if it’s unknown. Hopefully not, but there’s still a possibility