this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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[PSA] Malware distributed on the AUR (lists.archlinux.org)
submitted 2 days ago by Xylight@lemdro.id to c/linux@lemmy.ml
83 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

On the 16th of July, at around 8pm UTC+2, a malicious AUR package was uploaded to the AUR. Two other malicious packages were uploaded by the same user a few hours later. These packages were installing a script coming from the same GitHub repository that was identified as a Remote Access Trojan (RAT).

The affected malicious packages are:

  • librewolf-fix-bin
  • firefox-patch-bin
  • zen-browser-patched-bin

The Arch Linux team addressed the issue as soon as they became aware of the situation. As of today, 18th of July, at around 6pm UTC+2, the offending packages have been deleted from the AUR.

We strongly encourage users that may have installed one of these packages to remove them from their system and to take the necessary measures in order to ensure they were not compromised.

Follow up

There are more packages with this malware found.

  • minecraft-cracked
  • ttf-ms-fonts-all
  • vesktop-bin-patched
  • ttf-all-ms-fonts

What to do

If you installed any of these packages, check your running processes for one named systemd-initd (this is the RAT).

The suspicious packages have a patch from this now-inaccessible Codeberg repo: https://codeberg.org/arch_lover3/browser-patch

The Arch maintainers have been informed of all this already and are investigating.

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[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wait what happens once some government or state actor hacks rust's install script rustup with its curl | bash install procedure and relying on TLS certificates which are e.g. issued by the Russian government. (No, the rust project won't use a Russian/Chinese/US Gov certificate but your browser will trust near all of them...)

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

You're using that to download a program. If they can MitM the shell script, they can just as well MitM the program that you'll run right after the download...

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That is why Debian uses digital pgp signatures for all packages. And the GNU project uses strong cryptographic hashes for install packages.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 4 points 2 days ago

As does Arch.

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Sure, I guess, if you've got a distro installed on your PC and use the distro-provided packages to install the Rust compiler, then you can't be subject to such certificate MitM attacks.

Your comment sounded like you were primarily concerned about the shell script piping rather it just being a program which can be downloaded without going through distro packages.

[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

Your comment sounded like you were primarily concerned about the shell script piping rather it just being a program which can be downloaded without going through distro packages.

The AUR install scripts are just downloaded shell scripts which are executed (hopefully after inspection).

curl | bash just skips the inspection step - curl downloads to stdout, bash executes from stdin.

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 3 points 2 days ago

This is why we invented hash checking. Good thing they can't MITM where that's stored! /s