this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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as a non developer myself, to my understanding, the vulnerabilities were implemented in test binaries?
If so, i question why those were shipped to the client. Unless they were built into the package itself on the mirror, in which case, still curious as to why that would be. I would think tests are entirely benign and do nothing. Seems like it would be incredibly bad practice to do otherwise?
Seems like an obvious vector to shutdown any potential fuckery. But what do i fucking know.
The compile process was modified to decrypt and unpack the "corrupted" test zip file, which was actually a code patch, and apply said code patch before assembly of the final binaries.
hmm ok. Yeah idk, even from an organization aspect, i still wouldn't consider that to be ok. Test files that patch code on the fly is a recipe for a nightmare of maintenance. Which i suppose is the idea here considering that it's malicious code lol.
They were not shipped to the client. They were shipped to the build system, executed there after deobfuscation, and they inserted an additional, opaque program file into the build process.
that much i picked up on, though i didn't make it very clear. I did mention that alternative though.
It is way more complicated than that. Very good explanation, I could never do it justice.
Edit: I found an even better one https://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2024/03/30/a-microcosm-of-the-interactions-in-open-source-projects/
i know it's rather involved, i've been tailing it from the sidelines, though like i said, i am not a developer, so in terms of code and maintaining code im blind there. But everything else i understand.
It's definitely an interesting situation to observe.
It's common to bundle test artefacts with the release tarballs. The reason is that when Linux distributions build the software from the tarballs, they often run the tests to ensure that they pass.