Privacy

31238 readers

820 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

287

Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility breaks encrypted SSH connections | Ars Technica (arstechnica.com)

submitted 5 months ago by possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

TL;DR there was a backdoor found in the XZ program. All major distros have been updated but it is recommended that you do a fresh install on systems that are exposed to the internet and that had the bad version of the program. Only upstream distros were affected.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] claudiom@blendit.bsd.cafe 13 points 5 months ago (2 children)

For those on Android running Termux, it is also affected. Just checked my version of xz-utils and it was 5.6.1. Running "pkg upgrade" will roll back to version 5.4.5 (tagged as "5.6.1+really5.4.5" for both liblzma and xz-utils packages).

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Makes you wonder why Termux ships the latest stuff. It might be smart to allow more time for critical problems to get caught.

[–] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 9 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Probably for the exact same reason this backdoor was introduced. Users complain about slow feature rollouts so (unpaid) devs (maintaining software in their spare time out of the kindness of their hearts) cut corners. In some situations that looks like bringing on a second maintainer without thorough vetting, in others it looks like importing upstream packages without thorough vetting.

Don't blame the Termux devs here, blame the community that keeps pushing them to move faster.

[–] Prethoryn@lemmy.world 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

So if I am seeing this I am good?

[–] claudiom@blendit.bsd.cafe 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah, that's what mine "upgraded" to. All that update does is rollback to 5.4.5.