4 ms·
I recently noticed that the "Barcode Scanner" app by ZXing (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxing.client.android https://play.google.co
by dbrgn 6y ago
I recently noticed that the "Barcode Scanner" app by ZXing (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxing.client.android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.zxi...) was being review-bombed with 1* reviews. People were talking about the "recent update", even though the last update is from February 2019. As far as I know, that app is open source and never contained ads. (Of course, without reproducible builds, we'll never know for sure.)
Was ZXing also hit by some issue, or is that just confused people that mistook the ZXing barcode scanner for the Lavabird barcode scanner?
In the comments of the article, someone wrote:
> The Zxing project is the flagship open source barcode scanner project for many years, and the December 2020 build was infected with malware. That bad build has been removed, of course, but the damage to the project continues.
Is there any further information on this?
- lucioperca 6y agoProbably the people responsible for the malware barcode scanner have other scanner apps in the game and trying to prevent user from their app from installing the Foss app and live happily ever after.
- dbrgn 6y agoYep, fake reviews by malware-ridden competitors was also one of my thoughts. But there's this motto "don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity". It could also be both of course.
- aasasd 6y agohttps://github.com/zxing/zxing/issues/1345 https://github.com/zxing/zxing/issues/1345 The dev says the app hasn't been updated since 2019.
- pieter_mj 6y agoTo be clear : "the December 2020 build was infected with malware" only refers to the lavabird barcode scanner and not other apps (that use ZXing library or not).