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A nice tl;dr was https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39866307
Copied here:
For those panicking, here are some key things to look for, based on the writeup:
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A very recent version of liblzma5 - 5.6.0 or 5.6.1. This was added in the last month or so. If you’re not on a rolling release distro, your version is probably older.
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A debian or RPM based distro of Linux on x86_64. In an apparent attempt to make reverse engineering harder, it does not seem to apply when built outside of deb or rpm packaging. It is also specific to Linux.
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Running OpenSSH sshd from systemd. OpenSSH as patched by some distros only pulls in libsystemd for logging functionality, which pulls in the compromised liblzma5.
Debian testing already has a version called ‘5.6.1+really5.4.5-1’ that is really an older version 5.4, repackaged with a newer version to convince apt that it is in fact an upgrade.
It is possible there are other flaws or backdoors in liblzma5, though.
5.6.1+really5.4.1
Most sane Debian package management
They really ought to have version masking like in Gentoo portage.
Package management deserves more love on Debian, indeed. Yet they apparently have the largest collection of packages…
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The person that found this is a hero.
Whenever I see slightly weird behaviour, there is a temptation to just move on because there isn’t enough time, running software is complicated, and there is something else I want to do. I will try to change my attitude in future in case it uncovers a backdoor like this – it would be educational too.
Additional relevant discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39865810
I saw this video yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqjtNDtbDNI
The guy describes what’s going on pretty good
