Package: installation-guide
Severity: important
Tags: security

The online installation guide for Debian Stable at 
https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch04s03.html.en recommends the use 
of the win32diskimager utility for writing images to USB in section "4.3.1. 
Preparing a USB stick using a hybrid CD or DVD image". This software currently 
has issues, might compromise the security of Debian users and probably should 
not be recommended by Debian:

1) User comments on the main page 
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ report that the current 
version 1.0.0 contains malware, or tries to install crapware as part of the 
installation process. (If possible this should be investigated and if indeed 
the project is compromised, Debian users should be notified.)

2) Some user comments also state the tool does not work on Windows 10 while 
others claim it does. I installed this on a Windows 10 system and the software 
turned out not to function properly, indicating that 1) might also be the case, 
and of course majorly impacting Debian installation experience. Details below.

Navigate to Files->Archive and click on win32diskimager-1.0.0-install.exe. On 
the following page download starts automatically. Install the tool, run it and 
provide administrator credentials. Try to select the file to write: the opened 
file browser does not display almost any directories, and when an .img file is 
copied to the directories available, it does not show up in the file browser.

I suggest to replace the recommended tool for the time being and to investigate 
the trustworthiness of the utility.


[https://a.fsdn.com/allura/p/win32diskimager/icon?1495137073]<https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/>

Win32 Disk Imager download | 
SourceForge.net<https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/>
sourceforge.net
Download Win32 Disk Imager for free. A Windows tool for writing images to USB 
sticks or SD/CF cards . This program is designed to write a raw disk image to a 
removable device or backup a removable device to a raw image file. It is very 
useful for embedded development, namely Arm development projects (Android, 
Ubuntu on Arm, etc).




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