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... What's the actual difference between these two cases in terms of security ? Downloading install.sh from Firefox won't be magically safer than downloading it
by jcelerier 3y ago
... What's the actual difference between these two cases in terms of security ? Downloading install.sh from Firefox won't be magically safer than downloading it from curl and I'm not going to read 2k lines of shell script every time I install a new version of cmake on a new machine
- sebtron 3y agoWhat's an install script doing in 2k lines? If it is a reasonable size, I would definitely skim through it to check that it does not mess up with my environment. Or at least that it is not an obviously malicious script.
- acdha 3y agoOkay, so what happens next? It downloads and installs something which you almost certainly aren’t auditing before you install it. If you don’t trust their installer, you shouldn’t trust their code. The reason why a vocal subcommunity gets hung up on “curl | sh” is that they aren’t comfortable accepting the degree of trust which they’re placing in so many third parties but haven’t fully accepted the implications. Saying “download the file and open it manually” is basically the same as the TSA making you throw out a water bottle – it feels like diligence even though it’s pointless. This is why most security people are focused on things like pervasive sandboxing to contain the damage when someone makes a mistake, code-signing and revocation, and trusted third-party providers (e.g. a Linux distribution or App Store) which are more trustworthy and can possibly do things like audit every binary they ship.