Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by pja on Friday March 29, 2024 @01:59PM
(#39867077)
This account changed the instructions for reporting security issues in the xz github as their very last commit:
commit af071ef7702debef4f1d324616a0137a5001c14c (HEAD -> master, origin/master, origin/HEAD)
Author: Jia Tan <[email protected]>
Date: Tue Mar 26 01:50:02 2024 +0800
Docs: Simplify SECURITY.md.
diff --git a/.github/SECURITY.md b/.github/SECURITY.md
index e9b3458a..9ddfe8e9 100644
--- a/.github/SECURITY.md
+++ b/.github/SECURITY.md
@@ -16,13 +16,7 @@ the chance that the exploit will be used before a patch is released.
You may submit a report by emailing us at
[[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), or through
[Security Advisories](https://github.com/tukaani-project/xz/security/advisories/new).
-While both options are available, we prefer email. In any case, please
-provide a clear description of the vulnerability including:
-
-- Affected versions of XZ Utils
-- Estimated severity (low, moderate, high, critical)
-- Steps to recreate the vulnerability
-- All relevant files (core dumps, build logs, input files, etc.)
+While both options are available, we prefer email.
This project is maintained by a team of volunteers on a reasonable-effort
basis. As such, please give us 90 days to work on a fix before
Seems innocuous, but maybe they were planning further changes.
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by bombcar on Friday March 29, 2024 @02:18PM
(#39867271)
> Seems innocuous, but maybe they were planning further changes.
Seems like an attempt to get 90 days of "use" of this vulnerability after discovery. If they only had checked performance before!
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by hackernudes on Friday March 29, 2024 @03:18PM
(#39867916)
No, they just removed the bullet points about what to include in a report. The 90 days part was in both versions.
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by bombcar on Friday March 29, 2024 @03:23PM
(#39867965)
True, but the "talk only to me" part was new, I think.
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by hughesjj on Tuesday April 02, 2024 @05:28AM
(#39903806)
They didn't add any content, it was a pure removal commit
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by meragrin_ on Friday March 29, 2024 @05:12PM
(#39869081)
Yes. An incomplete report allows for dragging out "fixing" the issue longer.
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by buildbot on Friday March 29, 2024 @01:44PM
(#39866902)
> tukaani.org has address 5.44.245.25 (seemingly in Finland)
Hetzner?
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by TimWolla on Friday March 29, 2024 @02:06PM
(#39867141)
No:
route: 5.44.240.0/21
descr: Zoner Oy
origin: AS201692
mnt-by: MNT-ZONER
created: 2014-09-03T08:09:00Z
last-modified: 2014-09-03T08:09:00Z
source: RIPE
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by whizzter on Friday March 29, 2024 @02:29PM
(#39867407)
It's Finnish, Oy is short for "Osake Yhtiö" (share-association, basically a LLC), seems to be registered/hosted at https://www.zoner.fi/
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by jaakl on Sunday March 31, 2024 @04:13AM
(#39882415)
So probably Suojelupoliisi, Finnish Security and Intelligence Service is behind all this
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by buildbot on Friday March 29, 2024 @02:09PM
(#39867174)
Interesting, seems to be a tiny finnish hosting company: https://www.zoner.fi/english/
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by ancientMariner on Sunday March 31, 2024 @06:14AM
(#39882942)
Zoner is a Finnish web hosting company, which has a history of providing hosting for Finnish open source projects, and the original maintainer (and most of the original crew) is Finnish as well. Nothing weird here.
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by yencabulator on Friday March 29, 2024 @03:11PM
(#39867825)
For what it's worth, tukaani is how you spell toucan (the bird) in Finnish, and Lasse is a common Finnish name; the site being previously hosted in Finland is very plausible.
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by Stagnant on Friday March 29, 2024 @03:56PM
(#39868332)
Yeah according to their website[0] it looks like majority of the past contributors were Finnish so nothing odd about the hosting provider. On the same page it says that Jia Tan became co-maintainer of xz in 2022.
Re:Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server com...
by mxmlnkn on Friday March 29, 2024 @07:24PM
(#39870153)
The website change reminds me a bit of lbzip2.org https://github.com/kjn/lbzip2/issues/26#issuecomment-1582645... Although, at the moment, it only seems to be spam. The last commit was 6 years ago, so I guess that's better than a maintainer change...
$ host xz.tukaani.org
host xz.tukaani.org is an alias for tukaani-project.github.io.
And originally it was not:
$ host tukaani.org
tukaani.org has address 5.44.245.25 (seemingly in Finland)
It was moved there in Jan of this year, as per the commit listed in my prior post. By this same person/account. This means that instead of Lasse Collin's more restrictive webpage, an account directly under the control of the untrusted account, is now able to edit the webpage without anyone else's involvement.
For example, to make subtle changes in where to report security issues to, and so on.
So far I don't see anything nefarious, but at the same time, isn't this the domain/page hosting bad tarballs too?