When the xz backdoor was discovered, I quickly uninstalled my Arch based setup with an infected version of the software and switched to a distro that shipped an older version (5.5 or 5.4 or something). I found an article which said that in 5.6.1-3 the backdoor was “fixed” by just not letting the malware part communicating with the vulnerable ssh related stuff and the actual malware is still there? (I didn’t understand 80% of the technical terms and abbreviations in it ok?) Like it still sounds kinda dangerous to me, especially since many experts say that we don’t know the other ways this malware can use (except for the ssh supply chain) yet. Is it true? Should I stick with the new distro for now or can I absolutely safely switch back and finally say that I use Arch btw again?
P. S. I do know that nothing is completely safe. Here I’m asking just about xz and libxzlk or whatever the name of that library is
EDIT: 69 upvotes. Nice
Arch wasn’t affected at all, cause the backdoor trigger was only on deb and rpm distros.
However it still a good practice to update your system and leave this version behind. Anyway, Arch already updated and is no longer distributing the backdoor version, therefore 5.6.1-3 is safe
You can use Arch btw again. Actually, you never had to leave it at first
To add to your point: The .deb ones are most likely safe, since it would only be on the unstable & experimental branches. Your garden variety production servers & personal computers should be fine. That is unless you’re into some unusual setup like with playing around with the upcoming version, or for some reason are pulling your own xz build.
Can’t speak for the .rpm tho.
Yeah, I checked myself when this was first a thing. Debian 12 and Ubuntu 22.04 latest are on 5.4 and 5.2 respectively.
