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400+ Arch Linux AUR Packages Compromised in a Supply Chain Attack Deploying Infostealers
(cybersecuritynews.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I hope all the Arch based distros will do a proper post to inform their users on how to cleanup afterwards.
I'm hoping at least cachyos, the distro I use, will tell me exactly how to check and clean my system.
I remember that when I installed a few of my AUR package, I was well aware that this repo was pretty much unregulated and that I just have to trust it's safe. So I made sure to only use AUR as a last resort. But there was warnings on cachyos that were displayed to tell me to be cautious about it so that's at least a positive.
The article has instructions to do exactly that.
The Checklist of infected packages
Holy shit it's like all of Python.
Yeah, Python has been a massive vulnerability for a long while. And the AUR has similar issues. This is only getting widespread coverage now. But it's always been a risk.
Well, those are mostly extension libraries, stuff "normally" installed using pip. Arch is kind of unique that they encourage using system aur over pip, npm and other package managers. While it is a big radius, none of the python packages stick out to me, but maybe I just haven't encountered the popular ones.
It isn't really all that unique? Debian does it, el does it, probably almost any popular distro?
I suppose it's become more common since PEP 668 was introduced, less unique these days.
The attackers specifically targeted orphaned projects on AUR so it's no wonder most of those aren't familiar to us.