We're breaking down the attack: how it works, how it was hidden, and why time was running out for the attacker.

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oss-security mailing list — Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh server compromise.
Fedora Announcement
Debian Announcement
Ubuntu Announcement
Kali Linux Announcement
Arch Linux Announcement
Gentoo Announcement
openSUSE Tumbleweeed Announcement
NixOS Unstable Discussion
Why does it take two weeks for NixOS to replace xz?
Andres Freund on Mastodon — I was doing some micro-benchmarking at the time, needed to quiesce the system to reduce noise. Saw sshd processes were using a surprising amount of CPU, despite immediately failing because of wrong usernames etc....
rwmj on Hacker News — Very annoying - the apparent author of the backdoor was in communication with me over several weeks trying to get xz 5.6.x added to Fedora 40 & 41 because of its "great new features"
A Microcosm of the interactions in Open Source projects — Make no mistake. This is the way it works. It needs to change.
Devuan GNU/Linux on X — Devuan is not affected by the latest vulnerability caused by systemd.
systemd PR: Dynamically load compression libraries
Matteo Croce on X — I'm the author of such PR. While I absolutely didn't know that libxz had a backdoor, I really think that libraries should be loaded on-demand when rarely used, hence my change :)
Ryan C. Gordon on X — This is probably how the xz thing happened, right?
Jan Wildeboer on the Fediverse — Again the FOSS world has proven to be vigilant and proactive in finding bugs and backdoors, IMHO.
Unplugged Core Membership
TXLF is coming up! — April 12 - 13 in Austin, Texas.
LFNW coming up! — April 26 - 28
Mobile Game Ads Are Boosting Podcast Follower Counts — Wondery, iHeart and Lemonada Media are all using a non-public product from MowPod - which gives extra lives and game credits to gamers if they follow shows on Apple Podcasts from game apps.
MowPod's podcast promotion tools: tales from the bar
fortydeux's NixOS Configs
Prism Launcher — An Open Source Minecraft launcher with the ability to manage multiple instances, accounts and mods.
World Backup Day — March 31st — One small accident or failure could destroy all the important stuff you care about.
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556: The xz Backdoor Exposed &#128680; 01:10:03 Share

LINUX Unplugged

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556: The xz Backdoor Exposed 🚨