Explain Like I'm Five

14277 readers

9 users here now

Simplifying Complexity, One Answer at a Time!

Rules

Be respectful and inclusive.
No harassment, hate speech, or trolling.
Engage in constructive discussions.
Share relevant content.
Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
Use appropriate language and tone.
Report violations.
Foster a continuous learning environment.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

ELI5: The Linux xz backdoor situation (pawb.social)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

33 comments fedilink hide all child comments

PLEASE. I keep seeing it in memes. As I understand it the latest version of the xz package (present in rolling release distros like Arch and SUSE Tumbleweed) has "a backdoor", but I have no earthly clue what can be done by malicious folks with access to that backdoor or if I should be afraid or how to check if my distro is compromised or how to prevent damage if it is or (...)

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Each distribution is different but Arch has stated that they did have the exploit artifact in their version of xz but the artifact was not loaded into memory with sshd as their process does not link sshd with liblzma library.

More details below but highly recommend upgrade/downgrade anyways to remove the exploit code version.

https://archlinux.org/news/the-xz-package-has-been-backdoored/