Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Zack Brown reports on developer trust.
Developer Trust
In recent days, the infamous "XZ backdoor" has the entire open source world reconsidering its development practices. Essentially, a bad actor joined an open source project, submitted some good patches to gain the trust of the developers, and eventually submitted some cleverly hidden security holes that were actually accepted into the project. It was only when a regular user noticed some odd timing behaviors in the tool and decided to track down the issue that the whole thing came to light.
The open source project was not the Linux kernel, but the tool came very close to being included in many Linux distributions. From there of course, it would have been inside the foundational infrastructure of the entire Internet and almost every corporate network within the known universe.
It's absolutely not the first time this has been attempted, and, of course, there could be any number of similar backdoors that have not yet been discovered. The whole experience has been a wake-up call for the open source world to re-examine their code review practices. For example, one reason the XZ backdoor was able to make it into the project was because the maintainer was overworked and burnt out. So the issue is about more than simply expecting everyone to work harder. We'll be seeing the true effects of this wake-up call for years to come.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 is Available
Linus Torvalds has announced that the latest kernel has been released with plenty of core improvements and even more hardware support.
-
Kali Linux 2025.3 Released with New Hacking Tools
If you're a Kali Linux fan, you'll be glad to know that the third release of this famous pen-testing distribution is now available with updates for key components.
-
Zorin OS 18 Beta Available for Testing
The latest release from the team behind Zorin OS is ready for public testing, and it includes plenty of improvements to make it more powerful, user-friendly, and productive.
-
Fedora Linux 43 Beta Now Available for Testing
Fedora Linux 43 Beta ships with Gnome 49 and KDE Plasma 6.4 (and other goodies).
-
USB4 Maintainer Leaves Intel
Michael Jamet, one of the primary maintainers of USB4 and Thunderbolt drivers, has left Intel, leaving a gaping hole for the Linux community to deal with.
-
Budgie 10.9.3 Now Available
The latest version of this elegant and configurable Linux desktop aligns with changes in Gnome 49.
-
KDE Linux Alpha Available for Daring Users
It's official, KDE Linux has arrived, but it's not quite ready for prime time.
-
AMD Initiates Graphics Driver Updates for Linux Kernel 6.18
This new AMD update focuses on power management, display handling, and hardware support for Radeon GPUs.
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.