Oh dear, the situation with the Arch Linux AUR got a fair bit worse since GamingOnLinux initially covered the malicious packages.
  • VirtuePacket@lemmy.zip
    4·
    3 hours ago

    I think I’d be satisfied with just not allowing people to take over orphaned packages. That seems like a glaring attack vector and closing it would not harm the AUR in any way.

    And yea, arch (and its derivatives) probably should not shop with AUR helpers pre installed.

  • GaumBeist@lemmy.ml
    9·
    6 hours ago

    At least some level of human review is going to be needed.

    So… completely negating the point of a User Repository??? Introduce some kind of authoritative oversight, and it’s essentially just another regular repository, erasing all the benefits of the AUR. The whole point of the distro slapping a huge disclaimer of “DISCLAIMER: AUR packages are user produced content. Any use of the provided files is at your own risk.” at the top of the homepage is because these kind of compromises are the trade-off one makes

  • communism@lemmy.ml
    11·
    7 hours ago

    What an annoyingly uninformative title. Better title: a lot more compromised AUR packages have been found since our last update.

    “A lot worse” is intentionally vague to get people to click.

      • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
        1·
        5 minutes ago

        Using Linux is not a dick measuring contest (and man I hate these threads asking “why is your distro the best?” - it feels like trolling and sowing division and grief to me. A bit like asking a mother “What is your favorite child?”.)

        But apart from that, I think we can all agree that security of AUR packages is no good enough, and that this deficit is by design.

    • DasSkelett@discuss.tchncs.de
      5·
      6 hours ago

      Huh, you really feel schadenfreude over another reputable project being hit by/having to deal with malware? And all the people who might be affected by it?

      That is not something that would ever cross my mind.

    • f3nyx@lemmy.ml
      8·
      7 hours ago

      Debian users should receive their news 6-12 months after everyone else, change my mind

      /s

  • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
    13·
    19 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)

    • communism@lemmy.ml
      6·
      7 hours ago

      It’s just a repository of user-contributed packages. It’s no different malware-ability-wise to, say, GitHub. If you are running code you found from a stranger on the internet then you are liable for it, and you need to do your due diligence in checking that you are not running malware. It is a good thing that the AUR exists because it means Arch user packages are all in one centralised repository instead of scattered across GitHub, Sourceforge, Codeberg, Pastebin, forums, whatever. If you are just installing random AUR packages then that’s on you. It’s basic internet safety to not automatically trust random scripts you find on the internet.

      • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
        1·
        7 hours ago

        I never said that GitHub was better. I just don’t feel like using a package maintained by a stranger with no tied to neither the software I want to install nor the distribution packages repository.

        Of course installing random code from stranger is never great advice regardless of the distribution source. But AUR is simply not for me, and many users don’t understand the risk or let’s say responsabilities it involves while installing packages from that source.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
      2·
      9 hours 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, since about ten years… 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 (which means not doing a reinstall, but replacing the oldstable packages with the newer stable packages), the system becomes a bit untidy over time. Old packages, scripts, and configurations accumulate, and it is hard to get rid of it without breaking things, because one just cannot delete everything one does not remember what it was needed for. And there is so much stuff in software that, after all, turns out to be not such a good idea. Yes, a fresh OS install leaves a tidy system, but it would cost a few days. (By the way, accumulating cruft in the long term is also somewhat of an disadvantage of rolling release distros.)

      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.

      • Hund@feddit.nu
        1·
        7 hours ago

        The issue with Arch is that they have like no packages at all. You’re more or less forced to use the AUR. Which is not something I would recommend to anyone. Which is also why I don’t recommend Arch to anyone. :D

        • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
          1·
          1 hour ago

          Yes! And everything is based on hashed source code - this guarantees long-term reproducibility, avoids vendor-lock-in with proprietary binaries and drivers (and that’s why some companies hate it), but above all makes much easier to inspect what is in a package.

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
      4·
      19 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.

  • tired_fedora@lemmy.ml
    97·
    11 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

  • MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip
    4·
    21 hours ago

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

        • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
          6·
          20 hours ago

          AUR is community-maintained packages intentionally designed to shift security responsibility to users. Without pre-installation vetting, meaning anyone can submit anything on there, making it perfect for malware distribution.

          Of course all code is visible for inspection, community voting exists, and malicious packages can be reported and removed which limit malicious action.

          But now we have LLM that can generate (and distribute) malware and do pretty good code obfuscation so I am not convinced by this model. Honestly I never felt comfortable using AUR (so I avoid it) because I’m not technical enough to review all the code my machine runs.

    • Christian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      3·
      13 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
      5·
      19 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?

    • HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
      1·
      18 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.

        • 5ymm3trY@discuss.tchncs.de
          3·
          23 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
            1·
            22 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
              10·
              20 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·
              20 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·
                18 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·
                  16 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
      2·
      23 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
        2·
        21 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