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XZ backdoor in a nutshell
(lemmy.zip)
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Ideally you need a double-blind checking mechanism definitionally impervious to social engineering.
That may be possible in larger projects but I doubt you can do much in where you have very few maintainers.
I bet the lesson here for future attackers is: do not affect start-up time.
I imagine if this attacker wasn't in a rush to get the backdoor into the upcoming Debian and Fedora stable releases he would have been able to notice and correct the increased CPU usage tell and remain undetected.