Explain Like I'm Five

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

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

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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 (...)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've been wondering if there's some kind of notification code that let's the bad actor know they've successfully infected someone. Otherwise what's the plan, trawl the entire IP space for devices your key can access? Wouldn't it need UPNP or some other method to reach most people's systems?

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

I think the intention probably wasn't to get into Jane Q. Public's home computer, but was aimed at being able to infiltrate more high value targets – corporations, governments etc. While I haven't kept up with the latest findings in this, I'd guess the intention was to have the backdoor spread widely enough that you really wouldn't need to scan for targets – Debian and distros that use RPM are very popular after all.

It'd definitely require the target to have their sshd open to the world, but that's not uncommon at all unfortunately.