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backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to ssh server compromise
(www.openwall.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2024
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could a Flatpak contain one of the backdoored builds of
xzorliblzma? Is there a way to check? Would such a thing be exploitable, or does this backdoor only affect ssh servers?The base runtime pretty much every Flatpak uses includes xz/liblzma, but none of the affected versions are included. You can poke around in a base runtime shell with
flatpak run --command=sh org.freedesktop.Platform//23.08or similar, and check your installed runtimes withflatpak list --runtime.23.08 is the current latest version used by most apps on Flathub and includes xz 5.4.6. 22.08 is an older version you might also still have installed and includes xz 5.2.12. They're both pre-backdoor.
It seems there's an issue open on the freedesktop-sdk repo to revert xz to an even earlier version predating the backdoorer's significant involvement in xz, which some other distros are also doing out of an abundance of caution.
So, as far as we know: nothing uses the backdoored version, even if it did use that version it wouldn't be compiled in (since org.freedesktop.Platform isn't built using Deb or RPM packaging and that's one of the conditions), even if it was compiled in it would to our current knowledge only affect sshd, the runtime doesn't include an sshd at all, and they're still being extra cautious anyway.
One caveat: There is an unstable version of the runtime that does have the backdoored version, but that's not used anywhere (I don't believe it's allowed on Flathub since it entirely defeats the point of it).