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Did One Guy Just Stop a Huge Cyberattack? (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 7 months ago by testeronious@lemmy.world to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[-] QBertReynolds@sh.itjust.works 145 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

"Engineers have been circulating an old, famous-among-programmers web comic about how all modern digital infrastructure rests on a project maintained by some random guy in Nebraska. (In their telling, Mr. Freund is the random guy from Nebraska.)"

That's not quite right. Lasse Collin is the random guy in Nebraska. Freund is the guy that noticed the whole thing was about to topple.

[-] BlueEther@no.lastname.nz 57 points 7 months ago

and that one guy (Lasse) was burnt out and pressured [by jia?] to step back and let jia be the person that the whole internet infrastructure relied upon

[-] Bitrot 47 points 7 months ago

Publicly pressured by sock puppets. You can see some rando doing similar in repositories for projects like Avahi.

[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 53 points 7 months ago

I suspect this was just a lucky catch of shit that happens all the time. Supply chain attacks are super scary and effectively impossible to eliminate in modern software development.

[-] Contend6248@feddit.de 28 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Obviously not impossible, just the best reason for open source software

[-] treadful@lemmy.zip 35 points 7 months ago

It's almost impossible to spot by people looking directly at the code. I'm honestly surprised this one was discovered at all. People are still trying to deconstruct this exploit to figure out how the RCE worked.

And supply chain attacks are effectively impossible to eliminate as an attack vector by a developer-user of a N-level dependency. Not having dependencies or auditing every dependency is unreasonable in most cases.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 13 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

There are sysadmins that discover a major vulnerabilities though troubleshooting

The key is the number of people involved

[-] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 5 points 7 months ago

So obscure projects are fucked.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 4 points 7 months ago

No one cares about obscure projects from an attack perspective. What you should be worried about is the dependency chain.

[-] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

People are still trying to deconstruct this exploit to figure out how the RCE worked.

True, but we do know how it got into xz in the first place. Human error and bad practice, we wouldn't have to reverse engineer the exploit if xz didn't allow binary commits all together. It's a very convoluted exploit with hiding "junk" and using awk and other commands to cut around that junk and combining it creating a payload and executing it. Our reliance on binary blobs is a double edged sword.

supply chain attacks are effectively impossible to eliminate as an attack vector by a developer-user of a N-level dependency. Not having dependencies or auditing every dependency is unreasonable in most cases.

Also true, because human error is impossible to snuff out completely, however it can be reduced if companies donated to the projects they use. For example, Microsoft depends on XZ and doesn't donate them anything. It's free as in freedom not cost. Foss devs aren't suppliers, it comes as is. If you want improvements in the software your massive company relies on, then donate, otherwise don't expect anything, they aren't your slaves.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 months ago

You can't test a archive program without binaries

[-] 4z01235@lemmy.world 18 points 7 months ago

Generate the binaries during test execution from known (version controlled) inputs, plaintext files and things. Don't check binaries into source control, especially not intentionally corrupt ones that other maintainers and observers don't know what they may contain.

[-] Rustmilian@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Exactly this. Couldn't have said it better myself.

[-] msage@programming.dev 0 points 7 months ago

laughs in Gentoo

[-] fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works 2 points 7 months ago

Right now the greatest level of supply chain secuirty that I know of is formal verification, source reproducible builds, and full source bootstrapping build systems. There was a neat FPGA bootstrapping proj3ct (the whole toolchain to program the fpga could be built on the FPGA) at last years FOSDEMs conference, and I have to admit the idea of a physically verifiable root of trust is super exciting to me, but also out of reach for 98% of projects (though more possible by the day).

[-] Cyber@feddit.uk 44 points 7 months ago

So, Microsoft saved everyone from the bad Linux then?

/s

[-] rollingflower@lemmy.kde.social 106 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

"Linux saved itself."

  • having FOSS code
  • being able to silence all system services to detect that bump
  • being able to run stuff in different ways, without a core system component (with and without systemd, as that backdoor only used data when sshd was started via systemd)
  • having people be perfectionist about performance measurements
  • having devs test upstream code not shipped to normal distros
  • being so good microsoft pays people to work on software for it
[-] psmgx@lemmy.world 25 points 7 months ago

You're late to the party NYT.

Also, dude made a good save. Only arch users got hit lol

[-] DumbAceDragon@sh.itjust.works 31 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

  1. The hack mainly targeted Debian and fedora

  2. Arch doesn't directly link openssh to liblzma, so the hack doesn't affect arch users.

[-] Revan343@lemmy.ca 7 points 7 months ago

The hack mainly targeted Debian and fedora

But on Debian it only shipped on sid. This is the reason for Debians slow as fuck release cycle

[-] Disonantezko 26 points 7 months ago

Do you know the exploit was detected in Debian Sid? (by a PostgreSQL developer), Arch got the update (with both compromised versions), but because don't directly link openssh to liblzma (as Debian), and thus this attack vector is not possible.

Also, other rolling distros also got the compromised versions, maybe: openSUSE Tumbleweed, Endeavour OS, Fedora Rawhide, Slackware -current, etc.

[-] qaz@lemmy.world 26 points 7 months ago

Arch didn't patch it with systemd so it didn't really affect them afaik. It did hit OpenSUSE Tumbleweed users.

[-] seaQueue@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

There was some checking in the exploit to verify that it was being built for a deb or rpm package, it didn't build for anything else. Also, the way the exploit was loaded at runtime relied on features of systemd that Arch isn't using. It was a dud on Arch.

[-] gnuplusmatt@reddthat.com 5 points 7 months ago

Fedora 40 testing branch and rawhide got it as well, as well tumbleweed and debian sid

[-] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 22 points 7 months ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20240405080123/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/03/technology/prevent-cyberattack-linux.html

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip -4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Thanks but Firefox already has a reading mode

[-] lemmyreader@lemmy.ml 7 points 7 months ago

Well, I had to solve three CAPTCHA puzzles before getting through to the page itself, so I figured to insert that link.

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 7 months ago

Maybe they don't like you

[-] MossyFeathers@pawb.social 18 points 7 months ago

A picture of the man

[-] just_another_person@lemmy.world 16 points 7 months ago

Yuuuuuuup. We all owe this man beer for life.

[-] m4@kbin.social 8 points 7 months ago

It felt like it had a bit of sensationalism, which alas is not uncommon in today's journalism, but can it be too much that a major newspaper like the NYT covering this story can bring indirect attention to the problem of hugely underpaid/no paid people working on (and mantaining) critical FOSS stuff?

[-] acockworkorange@mander.xyz 5 points 7 months ago

They did claim his work is “boring to tears” right after saying it was “thankless”. What a condescending piece of shit journalist.

[-] baldturkeyleg@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Yes

[-] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 1 points 7 months ago

https://www.foxnews.com/tech/us-avoids-digital-security-crisis-developer-uncovers-sabotage-software

this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
174 points (91.0% liked)

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