t y for sharing.
#showerthoughts The problem is in upstream and has only entered Debian Sid/unstable. Does this mean that for example bleeding edge Arch (btw) sshd users are compromised already ?
Arch is on 5.6.1 as of now: https://archlinux.org/packages/core/x86_64/xz/
We at Nixpkgs have barely evaded having it go to a channel used by users and we don’t seem to be affected by the backdoor.
Arch had a patch rolled out yesterday [1][2][3] that switches to the git repo. On top of that the logic in the runtime shim and build script modifier was orchestrated to target Debian and RPM build systems and environments [4].
[2] https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/xz/-/issues/2
[3] https://security.archlinux.org/CVE-2024-3094
[4] https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4
Looks like the 5.6.1-2 release on Arch moved from using the published GitHub releases to just using the git repository directly, which as I understand avoids the exploit (because the obfuscated script to inject the exploit is only present in the packaged tarballs and not the git repo itself)
They also believe we (Arch users) are unaffected because this backdoor targeted Debian and Redhat type packaging specifically and also relied on a certain SSH configuration Arch doesn’t use. To be honest while it’s nice to know we’re unaffected, it’s not at all comforting that had the exploiter targeted Arch they would have succeeded. Just yesterday I was talking to someone about how much I love rolling release distros and now I’m feeling insecure about it.
More details here: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/xz/-/issues/2
Someone always has to be the guinea pig.
That being said, maybe there’s an argument for distros that do rolling releases to have an “intentionally delayed rolling release” that just trails the regular rolling release by a fixed amount of time to provide more time for guinea pigs to run into things. If you want rolling, but can live with the delay, just use that.
Here’s a link to the PR for anyone who’s interested
Since you didn’t build a RPM or DEB package however, your didn’t compile in the backdoor.
Arch has pushed the patched xz just a few hours ago: https://archlinux.org/news/the-xz-package-has-been-backdoored/
