On Mon, Apr 01, 2024 at 06:36:30PM +0200, Vincent Bernat wrote:
>
> I think that if Debian was using git instead of the generated tarball, this
> part of the backdoor would have just been included in the git repository as
> well. If we were able to magically switch everything to git (and we won't,
> we are not even able to agree on simpler stuff), I don't think it would have
> prevented the attack.
I'm not sure how much it would have helped, but I think the theory
behind eliminating the gap between the release tarball and the git
tree is the theory that in 2024, more developers are more likely to be
building and testing against the git tree, and so it might have been
more likely noticed. After all, Jia Tan decided it was worth while to
check in 99% of the exploit in git, but to only enable it when it was
built from the release tarball. If the exploit was always active when
built from the git tree, perhaps someone might have noticed before it
Debian uploaded the trojan'ed binary package to unstable, and then a
week or so later, having it promoted to testing.
I'm not sure how likely that would be for the specific case of
xz-utils, since it appears the number of developers (not just
Maintainers) was extremely small, but presumably Jia Tan decided to do
things in that way in the hopes of making less likely that the malware
would be noticed.
- Ted
