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XZ Hack - "If this timeline is correct, it’s not the modus operandi of a hobbyist. [...] It wouldn’t be surprising if it was paid for by a state actor." (lcamtuf.substack.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Thought this was a good read exploring some how the "how and why" including several apparent sock puppet accounts that convinced the original dev (Lasse Collin) to hand over the baton.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

i can't see how paying someone would have changed anything in this scenario.

this seems to be a long running campaign to get someone into a position where they could introduce malicious code. the only thing different would have been that the bad actor would have been paid by someone.

this is not to say, that people working on foss should not be paid. if anything we need more people actively reviewing code and release artifacts even if they are not a contributor or maintainer of a piece of software.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

If my job didn't pay me, I would have certainly burned out years ago. For one, I'd need another job.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

i can't see how paying someone would have changed anything in this scenario.

we need more people actively reviewing code and release artifacts

I think you’ve answered your own question there

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

no, the solution is not to pay someone to have someone to blame if shit happens.

there are a bus load of people involved on the way from a git repo to actuall stuff running on a machine and everyone in that chain is responsible to have an eye on what stuff they are building/packaging/installing/running and if something seems off, it's their responsibility to investigate and communicate with each other.

attacks like this will not be solved by paying someone to read source code, because the code in the repo might not be what is going to run on a machine or might look absolutely fine in a vacuum or will be altered by some other part in the chain. and even if you have dedicated code readers, you cant be sure that they are not compromised or that their findings will reach the people running/packaging/depending on the software.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Of course you can’t be sure anyone involved, paid or not, isn’t compromised. But if you want more human effort put into a project, people need a reason to do so. Complaining that volunteer contributors don’t spend enough of their time and effort with no compensation isn’t going to solve anything. Maybe AI tools will make that work more available in the near future.