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  • Hacker News
  • So another active attack? Does anyone have any other details?
    by mijoharas
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123208
    by DavideNL
  • for context, 2 days ago:

    Arch Linux disables AUR package adoption (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123208)

    by evil-olive
  • Also see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49123208
    by DavideNL
  • Practically, is there a better alternative to Arch/AUR? I've used it for years because of the bleeding-edge packages and stability (for me) but with the increased security incidences I don't feel safe. I don't have the time/desire to read the build files of every package I install.
    by type4
  • Arch is fine, just don't use the AUR unless you are prepared to validate the PKGBUILD.

    Personally, I only use AUR packages that just wrap binaries from well known sources, the only thing that should change in the diff is the sha256 and the version string which makes re-validating them after an update only take a few seconds.

    by streb-lo
  • Sadly, this is the future of a lot of FLOSS development unless people start to see their projects as their legacy instead of a simple hobby or a way to scratch an itch.

    Once your project obtains any sort of real notoriety, it starts having a blast radius, and you need to have at least some idea of who is pushing what to it when and why. The Linux kernel has a pretty good system of this for the time being with Linus being BDFL. There's governance, there's a standard, and most importantly, there are resources coming in.

    If your wares are being used by large groups of people you've never met and in ways you cannot possibly imagine, then it's time to start doing the boring paperwork and political parts of managing the community around it, not just pushing commits and adding features.

    by lenerdenator
  • lmao, no. start paying people for FLOSS development, and maybe then we can talk about holding them accountable for their projects. as long as there are no contracts and no payment, there’s no point in making demands of these people.
    by plastic-enjoyer
  • Linus gets paid to be a BDFL. Pay me enough and I too will sit down and benevolently dictate things all day long. Until then, the world will have to make do with the blast radius.
    by matheusmoreira
  • Well, I guess I'll avoid updating for the next few days. A bit worrisome that I did so last night.

    I wish I had a clear operating system to switch to for safety and the benefits that come with the AUR or the Nix ecosystem. Unfortunately it seems that the era of being able to naively and gratefully trust in the armies of volunteer maintainers is over.

    LLMs make large scale and long-term attacks easy and cheap. You could (and if I was a three letter agency, I would probably do so!) maintain ten thousand packages as three thousand separate "individuals" for years before cashing in the trust you've built up.

    by numeri
  • I used alpine linux and it looks pretty easy to setup your own repository, including build scripts for packages. I now use OpenBSD and the port systems of the BSD (each are different BTW) make it also easy to add extra software.
    by skydhash
  • > the era of being able to naively and gratefully trust in the armies of volunteer maintainers is over

    The maintainers you're supposed to trust are Arch Linux's actual staff made up of package maintainers, formerly known as trusted users.

    AUR packages are maintained by randoms on the internet. Anyone can sign up and push a package.

    by matheusmoreira
  • > I wish I had a clear operating system to switch to for safety and the benefits that come with the AUR or the Nix ecosystem.

    Can't have it both ways.

    Your packages can come from a small number of trusted individuals who maintain the software distribution. Naturally, this limits your choices to the packages they personally maintain. If you need something outside of that set, you need to ask them to include it or source it yourself.

    Alternatively, your packages can come from a software repository that allows internet randoms to push literally anything. That expands your selection to all software ever created, which includes malware since nobody's doing the work to filter that stuff out.

    Arch Linux offers both paradigms. Make an informed decision.

    by matheusmoreira
  • > naively and gratefully trust in the armies of volunteer maintainers is over

    I'm almost scared to ask, did you not even review the PKGBUILD or anything else before installing stuff from the AUR?

    Nixpkgs has a completed different model compared to AUR, the changes that end up in nixpkgs are all reviewed by maintainers, while AUR is literally free-for-all "anyone can push anything at any time", I don't think you ever could "naively and gratefully trust" AUR in the way you might have been.

    by embedding-shape
  • The explicit expectation with the AUR has always been that you can't blindly trust the PKGBUILD files. It's more like running an installer from a random website on Windows than it is to using official distro repositories. I think the wiki also always advised against using AUR helper tools that blur the lines between official repositories and the AUR.
    by meribold
  • The Arch wiki explicitly links to the AUR for lots of things, but the prime example is probably the NVIDIA page - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA - this page is going to be massively viewed, and if you have Pascal or older architecture the suggested driver is from, you guessed it, the AUR.

    Nowhere on this page does it suggest that the AUR is at all untrustworthy.

    by hug