The malicious changes were submitted by JiaT75, one of the two main xz Utils developers with years of contributions to the project.
“Given the activity over several weeks, the committer is either directly involved or there was some quite severe compromise of their system,” an official with distributor OpenWall wrote in an advisory. “Unfortunately the latter looks like the less likely explanation, given they communicated on various lists about the ‘fixes’” provided in recent updates. Those updates and fixes can be found here, here, here, and here.
On Thursday, someone using the developer’s name took to a developer site for Ubuntu to ask that the backdoored version 5.6.1 be incorporated into production versions because it fixed bugs that caused a tool known as Valgrind to malfunction.
“This could break build scripts and test pipelines that expect specific output from Valgrind in order to pass,” the person warned, from an account that was created the same day.
One of maintainers for Fedora said Friday that the same developer approached them in recent weeks to ask that Fedora 40, a beta release, incorporate one of the backdoored utility versions.
“We even worked with him to fix the valgrind issue (which it turns out now was caused by the backdoor he had added),” the Ubuntu maintainer said.
He has been part of the xz project for two years, adding all sorts of binary test files, and with this level of sophistication, we would be suspicious of even older versions of xz until proven otherwise.
That link strengthens my argument that we’re assuming because it’s open source that the code is less likely to have security issues because it’s easier to be audited, when in truth it really just depends on the maintainer to do the proper level of effort or not, since it’s volunteer work.
When someone suggested a level of effort to be put on code checked in to prevent security issues from happening, the maintainer pushed back, stating that they will decide what level of effort they’ll put in, because they’re doing the work on a volunteer basis.
And my rebuttal is three-fold:
Security does not depend entirely on the maintainer, and there is recourse even in the worst case scenario of an uncooperative or malicious maintainer.
The maintainer you quoted said he would be open to complying with requests if the requesters were willing to provide monetary support. You are intentionally misrepresenting their position.
The alternative of closed source software doesn’t actually protect you from security issues, it just makes it impossible for any users to know if the software has been compromised. For all you know, a closed source software product could be using one of the hypothetical compromised open source software project that you’re so afraid of, and you would never actually know.
If you’re willing to pay a license for a private corporation’s closed source software so you get the pleasure of never being able to know your security posture, then why would you be unwilling to financially support open source developers so they have the resources they need to have the level of security that you’d like from them?
No I’m not. Or you’re assuming my position incorrectly.
You’re either intentionally misrepresenting the post or you failed to understand them correctly. I’ll let you take your pick for which is less embarrassing for you.
You’re incorrectly seeing more into what I’m saying than I’m actually saying, probably because you are very invested in defending Linux, and interpret what I’m saying as an attack on Linux.
For what its worth, I’m not attacking Linux. I use Linux as my daily driver (Fedora/KDE).
The key sentence in the post you linked which constituted more than 50% of the words being stated by the poster and yet you somehow conveniently missed which completely negates the whole narrative that you’re trying to promote:
Which means this person is NOT simply a volunteer as you insinuated here:
but in fact is available to be paid a fair rate for the labor they perform. In fact your entire description of the post is mischaracterizing what is being said in the post.
I don’t know how you could have accidentally missed or misinterpreted one of the two sentences being said by the poster, and the longer of the two sentences at that. It was also the first sentence in the poster’s statement. It seems more likely to me that you missed that on purpose rather than by accident. Maybe you’re just so eager to find evidence to match your narrative that your brain registered the entire point of the post incorrectly. Allow me to reframe what’s being said to simplify the matter:
As a self-employed contractor, if you demand that I perform free labor for you, I will decline that request.
Now just add a much more frustrated tone to the above and you get the post you linked.
You’re missing this part of what they said, take a second look (bolded part)…
That means they haven’t been paid yet, they’re doing volunteer work, and they’re soliciting publicly for pay to do the work that we would all expect volunteers to do already anyways, making sure their code is secure, which, is my point.
And the rest of that quote…
They’re signaling publicly that since they’re not getting paid to do the work they can do any level of effort, not just the required (security wise) effort.
We shouldn’t assume that full diligent effort is being done to secure the code, just because it’s open source and easily readable by anyone. Doesn’t matter if there’s easy access if no one ever actually looks at it.
I’m not saying it’s never done, I’m just saying we should not assume it’s always being done (my bet would be more often than not, it’s not) and that is a real problem, as this story/situation demonstrates. Capitalism, human nature, and volunteer versus paid work efforts, based on available hours to do the job correctly.
I really wish you would just stop trying to defend Linux and open source development, and listen to the concept/opinion I’m actually stating, because it’s really important for all of us that depends on open source efforts to be aware of it and act on it, not just stick our heads in the sand about it.
Your interpretation is simply not supported by the literal words being said by the person. “we can sit down and talk about my rates” implies that this person already has rates that they charge for the labor they do.
You’re projecting a meaning into the person’s words that simply aren’t there because you want it to fit a narrative that has is not commensurate with reality.
You brought up your credentials earlier so now I’ll bring up mine: My full time job, which I get paid a very competitive salary for, is to develop exclusively open source software. I have many collaborators in the industry, both at my same organization and from others (some non profits, some academic labs, some government agencies, but mostly private for-profit organizations) who contribute to open source projects either full time or part time.
I don’t have one single collaborator who is the mythical unreliable open source volunteer you’re talking about. Every single person I’ve worked with has a commercial or professional (i.e. academic, mission-driven) interest in the developmental health of open source software. When we decide what dependencies we use, we rule out anything that looks like a pet project or something with amateur maintenance because we know if the maintainer slacks off or goes rogue then that’s going to be our problem.
The xz case is especially pernicious. This is a person who by all initial appearances was a respected professional doing respectable work. He/they (perhaps there was a team involved) went to great lengths to quietly infiltrate the ecosystem. I guarantee someone could do the same thing at a private company, but admittedly they’re less likely to have as broad of an impact as they can by targeting the open source ecosystem.
I am listening, and I’m telling you that you’re wildly misunderstanding the nature of the open source industry. You, like many many other software developers, are ignorant about the vast bulk of widely used open source software gets developed.
A reminder of the actual tweet…
The point is not what the actual dollar amount would be, the point is distinguishing volunteer work that is currently being done for free versus future paid work that would be done, and to be able to dictate terms and how the work is to be done (security checks, etc.).
So at this point, I disagree with what you are saying, and I stand by what I’ve said.
Further, it’s not worth my time discussing this further with you in particular. Apparently we live in two different realities, and you’re completely knowledgeable about open source, where you know for a fact that I am not. Kind of hard the bridge that gap, conversationally. But at the end of the day, I can believe you, or my lying eyes (to quote Groucho Marx).
And actually at this point, after having spoken with you, especially with your latest comment where you stated what work you do/did for open source, I’m more fearful for open source codebases than I was before. Open source developers who take things personally, and with a ‘can do no wrong’ mindset, they just set themselves up for more security attacks.
Have a nice day.