this post was submitted on 08 Apr 2024
69 points (90.6% liked)

Linux

48193 readers
1708 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
 

When the xz backdoor was discovered, I quickly uninstalled my Arch based setup with an infected version of the software and switched to a distro that shipped an older version (5.5 or 5.4 or something). I found an article which said that in 5.6.1-3 the backdoor was "fixed" by just not letting the malware part communicating with the vulnerable ssh related stuff and the actual malware is still there? (I didn't understand 80% of the technical terms and abbreviations in it ok?) Like it still sounds kinda dangerous to me, especially since many experts say that we don't know the other ways this malware can use (except for the ssh supply chain) yet. Is it true? Should I stick with the new distro for now or can I absolutely safely switch back and finally say that I use Arch btw again?

P. S. I do know that nothing is completely safe. Here I'm asking just about xz and libxzlk or whatever the name of that library is

EDIT: 69 upvotes. Nice

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] bizdelnick@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

So you need to downgrade to even earlier version. Best of all, use a fork created by Joey Hess.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Does that require compiling Arch from source to avoid compatibility issues?

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

I don't know for sure, it depends on changes in the liblzma API. If there were any changes (backward compatible or not, usually nobody cares about forward compatibility), yes, recompiling is required.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml -1 points 7 months ago

Then it's not for me. I can't even write a Python script lol