this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2024
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This doesn't pass the smell test.
curlinshshisbash[^1][^1]:
sh <(curl -sSf https://url.redacted/script)Installing by piping from curl is pretty common and not a red flag in and of itself. Even Rust is installed this way. If you don't trust the URL, you also shouldn't trust any binary installers downloaded from that website.
Toxic. Speaking as someone who was security chief at an OS, what you meant to say was 'toxic'.
Given its insidious nature, though, 'venomous' may be a good alternate.
Rust is a red flag
Rust is an amazing programming language. No u
Why?
Crates is insecure and, as pointed out above, so is piping curl to bash for installing rust Dev tools
And? You are literally installing someone else's code. The compiler isn't an AV. This is true for all langs.
How is it any different than installing binaries from the site and just pulling the binary via curl? The bash script is also visible to anyone, feel free to check it for anything that might be malicious.
@Asudox @delirious_owl
There are many much safer ways of installing someone else's code than curl|bash. It doesn't even verify any signatures...
Trust is a thing. We should trust the person writing our dependencies and be able to verify that it was published by them, and not somebody in the middle maliciously altering the code.
You should not be installing unsigned binaries from a website. Either use a package manager that checks for signatures or manually check the signatures yourself. If the project doesn't sign their releases, open a bug report.
Can you elaborate?
I was under the impression that there was some kind of consensus around rust being one of the safest languages to use. However, I've seen comments about rust being bad pop up in a few threads lately but they never explain why they think so.
You're talking about using the language and preventing errors. That's less about security and more about preventing errors.
I'm talking about the supply chain, watering hole attacks, etc. Crates does not cryptographically verify the authenticity or anything that it downloads.
The only language that I'm aware of that has a dependency manager that has cryptographic auth of everything it downloads is Java's Maven. Everything else is vulnerable, rust included.