Transcript
Image of a man pointing a gun at his own foot.
Caption: Installing an AUR package without reading it’s PKGBUILD.
If it’s endorsed by the project team I might as well. At that point it’s the same as downloading from GitHub and if I am in AUR I’ve probably not found it in standard repos nor flathub.
I use Arch without touching this AUR in my latest install. Just use what’s in the main package repos or flathub
I just don’t understand the process of I don’t have two minutes to read what I’m installing. It’s fucking batshit crazy that all these retards want to come use Linux which is fine but then when they get solid advice they tell us they can’t be bothered.
Yeah, when something isn’t in the official repos, NixOS exists, Flatpak exists, and they’re all vetted.
Wanting a super clean system where everything is managed by pacman is purely about taste, so if you want it, you clearly can be bothered to put in the 2 minutes of work.
its
I was contemplating moving to NixOS, but then another fiasco just happened, masse me question what would one have to lose by switching to Qubes instead, considering the increasingly surveiling internet.
Nah, if you really want to live on the bleeding edge you gotta make blindly installing vibecoded junk from shady parts of the AUR part of your workflow
I once found a Rust program that streamlined the PKGBUILD reviewing process a lot by, first of all, giving you a really neat list of patterns and behaviours that would make a PKGBUILD suspicios or even plain dangerous, then having a scriptable rule-based engine that would either abort that operation, or show warns and workarounds to you.
I forgot its name, unfortunately, and I installed it on my previous installation (Garuda, now I’m on CachyOS).
Very dumb of my part not to try to write that down before the OS change lol.
pkgwatch maybe?
It was not that one, but yeah, it’s basically the same.
I just remembered the one(s) I used a while ago, tho, they were aur-guard, and aur-scanner, I used these two (the second one just because its
aur-scan codes [OPTIONS]andaur-scan explain <CODE>commands.
STABLE IS FOR HORSES I LOVE GAMBLING
/s
I wish I could give you a second upvote, that’s hilarious 😂
Well earned upvote, sir/ma’am.
All pointing with fingers to AUR, but the issue was (yet again) with NPM.
Sorry I missed something, how so?
The compromised packages load a script from thr net that runs a compromised npm package (“atomic-lockfile” 1.4.2).
Ok, also a AUR issue. But more so a NPM one, since they have all full moon two supply-chain attacks.
If you want a bunch of stuff that’s not in core or extra and you don’t want to intensely babysit the AUR, you could try Chaotic-AUR. It hosts prebuilt packages for a bunch of AUR packages which are actively maintained by the Chaotic team.
I consider it to be more secure than the AUR proper since they actually care for their packages and review nontrivial changes. For instance, the recent takeover attacks didn’t hit Chaotic-AUR builds since the changed packages didn’t make it past the review.
It’s still an unofficial third-party repository and closer to the AUR than to extra but I consider it a major step up.
I just recently reinstalled since I didn’t feel comfortable with how many AUR packages I had and ive been using ChaoticAUR exclusively now. Can confirm that its a great repo
Yes, but is it good, neutral, or evil?
IT’S MAHVEL BABY!
It is colorful socks
it is arch
I don’t think Arch is right for you.
Yes
I mean how often do you install AUR packages? Usually takes like a minute or so to skim through PKGbuild and the pkg comments and look for obvious issues. And most updates are just a sha hash and version change, taking like 5s to check.
Rarely, to be sure. I tried Arch for a bit, but I need a computer that I can actually use to get shit done, that isn’t a constant project itself. Even Qubes doesn’t require as much effort to keep operational.
But wasn’t the latest AUR attack from a dependancy in the pkgbuild? Going out of your way to review all the dependencies as well is not really possible by just skimming through the script.
I need a better wrapper that shows me diffs since last build. I’m too lazy for this
Also pulling in release messages from git etc would be nice
paru
Update your desktop only all one or two weeks, get basic protection (adblocker, hosts file), read the news.
It’s a peaceful life.
AUR Arch UrGettingMalware Repository
just use nix instead
we have super secure mechanisms in place to prevent supply chain attacks
/s (nix just hasn’t been targeted yet (as far as we know 💀💀))
/s (nix just hasn’t been targeted yet (as far as we know 💀💀))
Isn’t the real security through obscurity just being such a fringe market no one bothers? 🤔
just use nix instead
Maslow, is this your hammer?
Yeah, I just update all 20 flakes that I sourced from github and pray that none of them were hacked
Someone put my WM on the AUR. I am thus proud to be authoring malware :)
I’m running Arch daily since 2015, was on Debian before. I install and try a lot of stuff. Never had anything bad happened to me once. Worst case scenario the shit I just installed didn’t work so I have to debug it.
Not endorsing this apparently dangerous lifestyle, but also a little bit maybeYeah same. Aur has been significantly less virus prone than the windows norm (inb4 wut abut winget >;ppp) of “Googling some shit you want and clicking the first website to roll the dice on predatory ads or malware or maybe the thing you wanted”
…not to mention if you have btrfs you can just rollback a month or two and call it a day.
This is more important after the recent news of malware on AUR
I get why we need to do this but most people are not programmers either and probably don’t understand wtf they’re looking at.
While I understand some of what um looking at, when in just trying to get the updates over with its super annoying to review each aur pkgbuild.
Not updating AUR packages saved me from the last incedent 🙃I had 6 or sth packages installed who were in the list
