3 ms·

Which part is mistaken? You're of course correct that the general problem is unsolvable - but the goal is to opportunistically infect people who directly paste

Which part is mistaken? You're of course correct that the general problem is unsolvable - but the goal is to opportunistically infect people who directly paste the "curl example.com/setup | bash" that's helpfully provided in your getting started guide, without serving an obviously malicious payload to someone who could be inspecting it.

shawn 8y ago
Sorry, 2AM. You're right of course. I think the real message is that this is a new class of timing attack, and that it should be treated as such. E.g. curl itself needs to be updated to buffer its own output.
- dotancohen 8y ago
  I disagree. Maybe a new tool that downloads and then runs a script from the interwebs needs to be written, but curl itself does one job and does it well. I.e., curl is a *nix tool.
  - laumars 8y ago
    > Maybe a new tool that downloads and then runs a script from the interwebs needs to be written What you're describing there is a package manager. What we don't need is a tool for running any random script from the wider internet.
    - gkya 8y ago
      Isn't that tool what we call a "user"?
      - jchook 8y ago
        Sick burn.
    - allannienhuis 8y ago
      Yet Another Package Manager :) Seriously - you're right, but people use curl | bash because it's super simple/fast and usually just works. Package managers can be an intimidating mess; even the choices we have in package managers confound things these days - did I install that with apt? snap? npm? pip? aw, crap that program I just installed with pip isn't working because I'd already installed a version with apt and some of it's configuration isn't compatible!!! It's a mess. I really like snaps, but I hesitate for this reason - safer to default to apt on my ubuntu machine. [edit] by safer I meant 'less likely for me to get confused and so screw up something', not meant as a security comment.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Or perhaps people shouldn't curl | bash? I don't want curl to buffer all output, I use it on devices with little RAM and do stream processing.

shawn 8y ago

Sorry, 2AM. You're right of course. I think the real message is that this is a new class of timing attack, and that it should be treated as such. E.g. curl itself needs to be updated to buffer its own output.

dotancohen 8y ago
I disagree. Maybe a new tool that downloads and then runs a script from the interwebs needs to be written, but curl itself does one job and does it well. I.e., curl is a *nix tool.
- laumars 8y ago
  > Maybe a new tool that downloads and then runs a script from the interwebs needs to be written What you're describing there is a package manager. What we don't need is a tool for running any random script from the wider internet.
  - gkya 8y ago
    Isn't that tool what we call a "user"?
    - jchook 8y ago
      Sick burn.
  - allannienhuis 8y ago
    Yet Another Package Manager :) Seriously - you're right, but people use curl | bash because it's super simple/fast and usually just works. Package managers can be an intimidating mess; even the choices we have in package managers confound things these days - did I install that with apt? snap? npm? pip? aw, crap that program I just installed with pip isn't working because I'd already installed a version with apt and some of it's configuration isn't compatible!!! It's a mess. I really like snaps, but I hesitate for this reason - safer to default to apt on my ubuntu machine. [edit] by safer I meant 'less likely for me to get confused and so screw up something', not meant as a security comment.
adrianN 8y ago
Or perhaps people shouldn't curl | bash? I don't want curl to buffer all output, I use it on devices with little RAM and do stream processing.