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What we know about the xz Utils backdoor that almost infected the world
(arstechnica.com)
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this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Everybody keeps saying it was found by luck, but this seems like it was found by a guy who maintains his repository properly and monitors his CPU cycles diligently just to prevent this sort of thing. I guess I would call it lucky he found it so quickly, but it was definitely not found by luck.
The fact that that person happened to be looking on a system downstream to this one, while also having the context needed to pin it back to xz in particular is the lucky part. The same attack in any of countless other places wouldn't have gotten spotted the same way, or as quickly. That's not to say diligence on Freund's part wasn't a big factor here, but it's important to identify that luck was a big factor.
It's more so lucky that there was someone diligently doing that. It could've easily gone unnoticed had there not been someone like him.
Yep. It could also be found by luck a bit later, or caught in a strict process sooner or later that we won't know.
No process is perfect, but the fact this attack is super complex, with many levels of indirection on run time, detecting if it's in debug mode, forcing maintainers to disable Oss fuzzer (a tool that scans source code for bugs and vulnerabilities) and also involved social engineering and took years to get close to widespread release is to show what it takes to plant a back door on 100% Foss systems.
As opposed to closed source, where all it takes is a conversation between govt and a CEO.