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XZ Hack - "If this timeline is correct, it’s not the modus operandi of a hobbyist. [...] It wouldn’t be surprising if it was paid for by a state actor." (lcamtuf.substack.com)

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

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Thought this was a good read exploring some how the "how and why" including several apparent sock puppet accounts that convinced the original dev (Lasse Collin) to hand over the baton.

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[–] [email protected] 86 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Hopefully shows why you should never trust closed source software

If the world didn’t have source access then we would have never found it

[–] [email protected] 31 points 7 months ago

And if they do find it, it'll all be kept hush hush, they'll force an update on everyone with no explanation, some people will do everything in their power to refuse because they need to keep their legacy software running, and the exploit stays alive in the wild.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

open source software getting backdoored by nefarious committers is not an indictment on closed source software in any way. this was discovered by a microsoft employee due to its effect on cpu usage and its introduction of faults in valgrind, neither of which required the source to discover.

the only thing this proves is that you should never fully trust any external dependencies.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

The difference here is that if a state actor wants a backdoor in closed source software they just ask/pay for it, while they have to con their way in for half a decade to touch open source software.

How many state assets might be working for Microsoft right now, and we don't get to vet their code?