this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
523 points (99.1% liked)

Linux

48077 readers
884 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] capt_kafei@lemmy.ca 97 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Damn, it is actually scary that they managed to pull this off. The backdoor came from the second-largest contributor to xz too, not some random drive-by.

[–] AmbiguousProps@lemmy.today 51 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They've been contributing to xz for two years, and commited various "test" binary files.

[–] stsquad@lemmy.ml 60 points 7 months ago (1 children)

It's looking more like a long game to compromise an upstream.

[–] cjk@feddit.de 18 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Either that or the attacker was very good at choosing their puppet…

[–] stsquad@lemmy.ml 36 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well the account is focused on one particular project which makes sense if you expect to get burned at some point and don't want all your other exploits to be detected. It looks like there was a second sock puppet account involved in the original attack vector support code.

We should certainly audit other projects for similar changes from other psudoanonymous accounts.

[–] cjk@feddit.de 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, and the 700 commits should be reverted… just in case we missed something.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 7 months ago

That is a should be standard procedure

[–] stsquad@lemmy.ml 34 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Time to audit all their contributions although it looks like they mostly contribute to xz. I guess we'll have to wait for comments from the rest of the team or if the whole org needs to be considered comprimised.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It would be nice if we could press formal charges

[–] sim642@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago

Assuming that it's just that person, that it's their actual name and that they're in the US...

[–] ugjka@lemmy.world -2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

~~there will be federal investigation~~ just speculation if the culprit is a foreign actor

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 14 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Do you have a source for this?

[–] worsedoughnut@lemdro.id 6 points 7 months ago

Source: they made it up

[–] ugjka@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago

updated my post, it was just some speculation i misread

[–] Virulent@reddthat.com 2 points 7 months ago

I don't have a source but I think it is safe to say given the large corporations and government institutions that rely on XZ utils. I'm sure Microsoft, Amazon, redhat ect are in talks with the federal government about this