3 ms·

If it was "obviously" broken why was the xz backdoor such a shock to everyone? Do you personally audit the library dependencies of every tool you run, including

If it was "obviously" broken why was the xz backdoor such a shock to everyone? Do you personally audit the library dependencies of every tool you run, including core servers that come with your distribution? I think people don't do this. Also, even before the backdoor was discovered, the systemd team were making libxz be dynamically loaded only in the cases where it was needed which would have killed the backdoor dead. There's some evidence that this might have actually caused the backdoor to be sped up and hence led to its discovery. Claims that systemd has bad security have to explain why it was already implementing practices that would have blocked the xz backdoor without it even being discovered. That seems pretty decent to me.

tgv 3y ago
The point is that (even) the systemd maintainers do not vet their dependencies. As an attack vector, it is the (second?) highest level, yet they did not assume the responsibility. Everybody silently assumed they did, hence the shock. > Claims that systemd has bad security have to explain why it was already implementing practices ... No, they don't. It doesn't take away the fact that they did not check xz, and probably only few of their other dependencies.
- throwaway7356 3y ago
  > It doesn't take away the fact that they did not check xz, and probably only few of their other dependencies. Xz is also used by Debian's package manager (both dpkg and apt). Or tar. Or the Linux kernel. Or... It already was a system library on Linux systems before systemd started using it as well. Your post reads like you have no real idea what Xz is and how it is used. Btw, do you think the Linux kernel developers are also clueless for using Xz?
- mike_hearn 3y ago
  Nobody was silently assuming the systemd maintainers were reviewing the source tarballs of every dependency for obfuscated back doors.
  - tgv 3y ago
    That would be irresponsible and strengthen the case against run0 as a replacement. And let's be honest this time: the argumentation is that it's there to replace sudo.

tgv 3y ago

The point is that (even) the systemd maintainers do not vet their dependencies. As an attack vector, it is the (second?) highest level, yet they did not assume the responsibility. Everybody silently assumed they did, hence the shock. > Claims that systemd has bad security have to explain why it was already implementing practices ... No, they don't. It doesn't take away the fact that they did not check xz, and probably only few of their other dependencies.

throwaway7356 3y ago
> It doesn't take away the fact that they did not check xz, and probably only few of their other dependencies. Xz is also used by Debian's package manager (both dpkg and apt). Or tar. Or the Linux kernel. Or... It already was a system library on Linux systems before systemd started using it as well. Your post reads like you have no real idea what Xz is and how it is used. Btw, do you think the Linux kernel developers are also clueless for using Xz?
mike_hearn 3y ago
Nobody was silently assuming the systemd maintainers were reviewing the source tarballs of every dependency for obfuscated back doors.
- tgv 3y ago
  That would be irresponsible and strengthen the case against run0 as a replacement. And let's be honest this time: the argumentation is that it's there to replace sudo.