Hey, I’ve been hearing a LOT about the xz backdoor. Crazy story, but rather than reading 10 different articles about it from 3 days ago when the story was quite new, does anybody know a high quality write-up that has all the juicy details and facts? I really like in-depth guides that cover every aspect of the story.
Thanks in advance guys!
Original Mastodon post by Andres Freund about discovery
Original Openwall thread
Update by @dangoodin@infosec.exchange
JFrog article
Bluesky post by another person
Hacker News article
Update by the original maintainer
Wikipedia Article
Original Mailing history
That’s way more steps than I thought
I wonder if something so complex makes it easier to potentially detect than something slightly simpler.
Btw what does the .o file do, is that the one running inside ssh through system d?
I am by far an expert, but imo it seems it needed to be complex to achieve its goals, and to get that level of change in without notice required breaking it down and sneaking pieces in over time.
Happy to be corrected of course if this is a wrong interpretation
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I wonder exactly why ssh was taking so long more. Perhaps the bits that scan ssh logs with a regex to extract IP address and username?
Whatever it is, that particular bit should be easy to deactivate since somehow a full fledged binary file with executable code was being bundled. I can imagine it only being active under a toggle that would make it harder to detect, such as a specific time of day.
That’s my take as well