When the xz backdoor was discovered, I quickly uninstalled my Arch based setup with an infected version of the software and switched to a distro that shipped an older version (5.5 or 5.4 or something). I found an article which said that in 5.6.1-3 the backdoor was “fixed” by just not letting the malware part communicating with the vulnerable ssh related stuff and the actual malware is still there? (I didn’t understand 80% of the technical terms and abbreviations in it ok?) Like it still sounds kinda dangerous to me, especially since many experts say that we don’t know the other ways this malware can use (except for the ssh supply chain) yet. Is it true? Should I stick with the new distro for now or can I absolutely safely switch back and finally say that I use Arch btw again?
P. S. I do know that nothing is completely safe. Here I’m asking just about xz and libxzlk or whatever the name of that library is
TL;DR: starting with 5.6.1-2, XZ is safe on Arch.
And here: https://security.archlinux.org/ASA-202403-1
5.6.1-2 is where the package switched from building from the tarball (backdoored) to the upstream git repo (clean). The tarball release contained some extra build instructions (which didn’t exist in the git repo) that added the backdoor during the build process. The issue arose from the downstream maintainers’ assumption that the contents of the tarball and the git repo were identical.
Subsequent changes, and 5.6.1-3, were mostly administrative, like changing the git repository’s URL (since the maintainer’s github account was banned) and locking out Jia Tan’s PGP key.
5.6.1-2 is where the package switched from building from the tarball (backdoored) to the upstream git repo (clean)
This is what I was looking for. Though if 5.6.1-2 doesn’t contain the backdoor, why is it listed as the last version that does contain it everywhere?
why is it listed as the last version that does contain it everywhere?
I don’t know, but the official advisory is most likely to be correct. Everything else is a game of Chinese whispers where the information becomes less reliable the more it is passed on. Maybe it’s because -2 still had Jia Tan’s signing key, and could have, theoretically, accepted commits signed by them.
Where is it listed as such? Can you give examples?
When i first heard of xz backdoor, i updated my arch system and the xz-utils package to 5.6.1-3 which in the version numbers seems to be a patch, and it seems to be, so think you’re safe from now
Arch wasn’t affected at all, cause the backdoor trigger was only on deb and rpm distros.
However it still a good practice to update your system and leave this version behind. Anyway, Arch already updated and is no longer distributing the backdoor version, therefore 5.6.1-3 is safe
You can use Arch btw again. Actually, you never had to leave it at first
I see what you did there.
What I did there? o.O
I don’t even know
Oh, I thought the “You can use Arch btw again.” is a play on the “I use Arch, BTW.”-meme. :D It’s even better, because this was not intentional I guess.
Ah! Okay…
Well, it was intentionally xD
But I didn’t thought it would be a funny pun hahaha
Anyway, I did it mostly because the OP also did
I see. But yours was a little bit more sneaky. And I loved it.
To add to your point: The .deb ones are most likely safe, since it would only be on the unstable & experimental branches. Your garden variety production servers & personal computers should be fine. That is unless you’re into some unusual setup like with playing around with the upcoming version, or for some reason are pulling your own xz build.
Can’t speak for the .rpm tho.
Fedora 39 and 40 (which is still in beta) uses xz 5.4. Fedora 41/rawhide (essentially the development branch) was affected it seems: https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2024-3094. CentOS Stream and RHEL have way more outdated packages than that, so they were never vulnerable to this backdoor.
openSUSE Tumbleweed (their rolling release) was affected: https://news.opensuse.org/2024/03/29/xz-backdoor/, Enterprise or Leap were unaffected.
Ah, so the .rpm is pretty much like the .deb in that it’s mostly unaffected. Speaking of, I think the .deb side may have VanillaOS affected since it’s based on Debian’s unstable branch.
Yeah, I checked myself when this was first a thing. Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 latest are on 5.4 and 5.2 respectively.
Yeah, all the current LTSes should be safe. Not sure about the Ubuntu 23.10, but the next LTS (24.04) is confirmed to be affected, hence the delay.
Not quite. It wasn’t confirmed to be affected, but they can’t prove that the build environment itself wasn’t compromised, thus the rebuild.
As a result of CVE-2024-3094 332, Canonical made the decision to remove and rebuild all binary packages that had been built for Noble Numbat after the CVE-2024-3094 332 code was committed to xz-utils (February 26th), on newly provisioned build environments. This provides us with confidence that no binary in our builds could have been affected by this emerging threat.
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/noble-numbat-beta-delayed-xz-liblzma-security-update/43827
And in the follow-up:
Was the vulnerable library ever in the Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) daily builds?
No.https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/xz-liblzma-security-update-post-2/43801
Thanks for the correction!
I know that Arch wasn’t affected but it’s only true for the known ssh backdoor. Afaik that thing can contain 100+ more “viruses” in it that we don’t yet know about. And btw I was using a distro that was quite a bit different to Arch (no, not Manjaro) so idk if it was any safer than Debian sid
Well, we don’t really know if there are backdoors in the old version as well, applying your logic
I meant a little bit different thing. Someone already explained how the issue was fixed and it seems safe enough to me
Well, until someone find a new backdoor, I call it safe again
I’ll not lose my mental health to a potentially and unknown shady backdoor that could be installed or not in a lib
Well, I have a polar opposite opinion about that lol. I guess I should stick with the old version
What about all the unknown back doors in the old versions 👻
So you need to downgrade to even earlier version. Best of all, use a fork created by Joey Hess.
Does that require compiling Arch from source to avoid compatibility issues?
I don’t know for sure, it depend on changes in the liblzma API. If there were any changes (backward compatible or not, usually nobody cares about forward compatibility), yes, recompiling is required.
Then it’s not for me. I can’t even write a Python script lol
If you worry about potential other backdoors in newer XZ versions, then you should also look into your kernel, systemd, dbus etc etc. All these things, can potentially contain backdoors that no one knows about yet.
As for currently known backdoors, the Arch versions are safe.
Of course backdoors can be anywhere. I was worried about this one especially because somewhere I read that the malicious code wasn’t removed but just restricted with some hacky stuff in 5.6.1-3. It turned out to be false, at least for Arch, so, in case the new information is true, I can switch back I guess. Using a “safe” version of Arch is better than running all the apps as Flatpaks that can still have the infected version of xz libraries as dependencied anyways
Well, I guess u have your answer, tho
The important thing here is to feel good with your decision
The back door was crafted to be used by a very specific encryption key. You are are vulnerable if the attackers are specifically targeting you. If you are a tangent of a nation, you should be worried:)
Well idk what “a tangent of a nation” means but I have political opinions very different to what my nation wants me to have so it might actually be a problem for me
I mean, appears a country is responsible for the attack after 2 years of preparation. If they don’t like you, probably was easy to send someone knock your door instead. Relax :)
What they mean is if you are a affiliated with a national government. You might also be a target if you are very very rich.
If you’re an average Joe, they probably won’t burn it on you.
It’s already burned by being discovered.
And, never underestimate the utility of a large botnet.
