Panik: your Debian stable system is so ancient it still contains the heartbleed bug.
Of course it was patched in all affected Debian versions: https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2014-0160
Is linux 6.1 vulnerable to heartbleed? I’m on lmde6 with linux 6.1 btw) edit: as other comment said debian 12 is good so everything alright
Its a CPU bug only the kernel can fix 🤒.
The kernel is responsible for its running hardware.
Am I dumb? that’s the spectere and meltdown bug. xz-utils malware is a whole other thing, lol.
The xz infiltration is a proof of concept.
Anyone who is comforted by the fact they’re not affected by a particular release is misguided. We just don’t yet know the ways in which we are thoroughly screwed.
This is a huge wake up call to OSS maintainers that they need to review code a lot more thoroughly. This is far from the last time we’re going to see this, and it probably wouldn’t have been caught if the attacker hadn’t been sloppy
https://upvote.au/comment/818245
Nah, I’d say the chap was pretty unsloppy.
Just that we were lucky that someone found it.
It’s a good thing that xz is a type of program that people may want to profile.
But this is an eye opener for people saying that Linux is “secure” (not more secure, but just secure .) because the code has many eyes on it. --> jump to digression.
This confirms my suspicion that we may be affected by the bystander effect, so we actually have less eyes than required for this.
digression:
- of course I don’t mean that this makes Linux less secure than Windows. The point that it makes it more secure than Windows/MacOS or other closed source systems is already apparent.
- Just that, we can’t consider Linux to be secure (without comparing it to something less secure) as many ppl would, when evangelising Linux.
My point being, tell the whole truth. The newbie that’s taking your advice will thank you for that later on.
The reason I consider this sloppy is because he altered default behavior. Done properly, an injection like this probably could have been done with no change to default behavior, and we’d be even less likely to have gotten lucky.
Looking back we can see all the signs pointing to it, but it still took a lot of getting lucky to find it.
I’ve always considered the “source is open so people can check for vulnerabilities” saying a bit ironic, because I’d bet 99% of us never look, nor could find it if we were looking. The bystander effect is definitely here as we all just assume someone else has audited it.
It’s a rough balance when you’re trying to convince people unfamiliar with the internals (let alone non technical people) to make the switch. Saying “Linux is safe, but not bulletproof” may scare them back to the devil they know even if there’s no greater guarantee of safety there.
I’m just waiting for the backdoor to be found in Firefox and Chromium or some library shared by most applications.
I always just assumed all the distros I use have backdoors as a fact of life. I take comfort in not being a person of interest to anyone and just blend in with the crowd. I also don’t use windows because for every backdoor my Debian may have, windows will have 100 more. Servers don’t get hacked all the time because it is not linux->internet, it is linux->bunch of stuff->internet, but I am sure backdoors are there.
Your Debian stable system is so ancient you got bigger vulnerabilities to worry about: Panik!
Also the problem was that Debian’s sshd linked to liblzma for some systemd feature to work. This mod was done by Debian team.
Even if you’re using debian 12 bookworm and are fully up to date, you’re still running [5.4.1].
The only debian version actually shipping the vulnerable version of the package was sid, and being a canary for this kind of thing is what sid is for, which it’s users know perfectly well.
There was a comment on Mastodon or Lemmy saying that the bad actor had been working with the project for two years so earlier versions may have malicious code as well already.
Mostly a joke about him calling it “ancient”, but there may be some unpatched vulnerabilities in older software. Though there could also be some new ones in newest versions.
Still, unless it’s Alpha/Beta/RC, it’s probably better to keep it up-to-date.
The malicious changes were submitted by JiaT75, one of the two main xz Utils developers with years of contributions to the project.
“Given the activity over several weeks, the committer is either directly involved or there was some quite severe compromise of their system,” Freund wrote. “Unfortunately the latter looks like the less likely explanation, given they communicated on various lists about the ‘fixes’” provided in recent updates. Those updates and fixes can be found here, here, here, and here. https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/03/backdoor-found-in-widely-used-linux-utility-breaks-encrypted-ssh-connections/
That really sucks. This kind of thing can make people and companies lose trust in open source. I wonder if we will learn the reason behind that. I would guess the developer was paid a lot of money by some organization to risk ruining his reputation like that.
Like the exact same thing can not happen in a closed source codebase. It probably does daily. Since closed codebases the due dilligence and reviews cost money, and nobody can see the state. They are intentionally neglected.
Open source nor closed source is immune to the 5$ wrench hack
Can’t decide which one is more relevant - the $5 wrench hack, or any sort of blackmailing.
Exactly, if you are as big a Microsoft, you can’t tell 100% if one of your developer’s is actually being paid by a foreign government. Even if you say completely check the commits other devs make, there will still be deadlines when a code review is just “looks fine, next”.
No, its the exact opposite.
Supply chain conpromise is a level of risk to manage not unique to FOSS. Ever heard of sunburst? It resulted in a lot of Microsofts cloud customers getting wreaked all because their supply chain was compromised.
Do people continue to buy into 365 and Azure? Yes. Without care.
So will this hurt open source projects? Not at all, in fact it will benefit them, highlight just why source code SHOULD be open source and visible to all! We would have had very little to no visibility and capability to monitor closed source. Let alone learn, improve and harden how projects can protect against this increasingly more common attack.
Yeah, I agree but I know some companies will have stupid thoughts like “a company employee is less likely to do that” or “at least we have an employment contract to back us up legally”.
Until they are attacked…
Not to mention a lot of the time the “attack” is from the company themselves. Just look at the Meta malware as an example
Ugh this reminds me of a guy I worked with, he used to be a trucker but became a software tester (he was also very religious).
Anyway he used to hate on open source software and call it open sores. According to him it was all amateur crap. Ugh I still hate that guy and it has been 15 years…
Sorry I should have been more clear too. I was trying to convey that the dev could have been paid off/threatened or it could be the work of a state actor or team of state actors under an alias. In one case they could care about their reputation but in the other maybe not.
Still paniking, cause the backdoor was apparently targetting Debian servers, it was discovered just by chance and the “mantainer” made commits for 2 years in the same repo
The fact that this was planned is what makes me nervous. Imagine what else is lurking.
and it was only discovered accidentally, when someone was profiling some stuff, noticed SSH using a bit too much CPU power when receiving connections even for invalid usernames/passwords, and spent the time to investigate it more deeply. A lot of developers aren’t that attentive, and it could have easily snuck through.
