I wonder if there is a way to spot this, even when vetting an app? Do the Maintainers of most distros manually read the code to discover whether an app is malware? Or do they have automated tools like opensuse’s testing tools which can detect malware. (Not sure if opensuse’s tool can test for malware or only app functionality).
Either way we need to have an automated programme that can checks all apps. It’s simply too much for humans given the massive number of apps, libraries etc.
No one is really doing anything. Repos have been poisoned multiple times over the decades, even original source code repos of big projects have been poisoned. If you don’t check the end binary on your system yourself, you’re at risk.
Do the Maintainers of most distros manually read the code to discover whether an app is malware?
No. At best you get a casual glance over the source code and at worst they won’t even test that the app works. It’s all held together with spit and baling wire, if an malicious entity wanted to do some damage, they could do so quite easily, it just would require some preparation.
The main benefit of classic package maintenance is really just time, as it can take months or even years before a package arrives in a distribution, and even once arrived, it has to still make it from unstable to stable, leaving plenty of room for somebody to find the issue before it even comes to packaging and making it substantially less attractive for any attacker, as they won’t get any results for months.
I wonder if there is a way to spot this, even when vetting an app? Do the Maintainers of most distros manually read the code to discover whether an app is malware? Or do they have automated tools like opensuse’s testing tools which can detect malware. (Not sure if opensuse’s tool can test for malware or only app functionality).
Either way we need to have an automated programme that can checks all apps. It’s simply too much for humans given the massive number of apps, libraries etc.
No one is really doing anything. Repos have been poisoned multiple times over the decades, even original source code repos of big projects have been poisoned. If you don’t check the end binary on your system yourself, you’re at risk.
No. At best you get a casual glance over the source code and at worst they won’t even test that the app works. It’s all held together with spit and baling wire, if an malicious entity wanted to do some damage, they could do so quite easily, it just would require some preparation.
The main benefit of classic package maintenance is really just time, as it can take months or even years before a package arrives in a distribution, and even once arrived, it has to still make it from unstable to stable, leaving plenty of room for somebody to find the issue before it even comes to packaging and making it substantially less attractive for any attacker, as they won’t get any results for months.
Ok makes sense. Thank you for explaining that 👍
It’s pretty easy, you make sure the manifest is referencing the upstream project