> Build scripts should not run sudo or anything similar. If it does that anyway, it’s wrong. At best, it’s a packaging error, as sudo shouldn’t be expected to work in a non-interactive environment like a build chroot. Sometimes a packager mistakenly tries to move package files into place instead of adding them to the package.
Something I've noticed over time is that security and quality are connected, not inherently but in that there's a lot of overlap. Reviewing an AUR package should include making sure that it doesn't use sudo and doesn't move files into place directly because that's a possible flag for malicious behavior. But equally, sudo is unreliable in the build environment ("sudo shouldn’t be expected to work in a non-interactive environment like a build chroot"), and trying to directly place files instead of packaging them means the package won't upgrade, downgrade, or uninstall cleanly, and won't properly attribute files when you ask the system what owns them. I don't know how well it generalizes, but heuristically I've moved toward viewing security and quality as sufficiently overlapping that they can be treated as a single area.
> I've moved toward viewing security and quality as sufficiently overlapping that they can be treated as a single area.
Quality implies knowledge, understanding, and the willingness to use them. Security is the same, but for the narrowed domain of security best-practices and common vulnerabilities. It's possible for something superficially high-quality to be insecure, but that implies that whoever made it either has extremely lopsided experience, or left the vulnerabilities in intentionally or knowingly. Of course, security is a particularly tricky domain, so even a fairly talented and good-intentioned developer is likely to make some missteps. Those missteps, I'd say, qualify as lapses in quality. I'd be damned surprised, on the other hand, to find that something low-quality is secure, and would assume that any such security is the product of a happy accident or sheer simplicity of the software, and is more likely than not to be lost as it grows and changes.
I am really really weary of installing anything from "user" repos, whether it's AUR or Fedora copr. It feels like the wild west. Admittedly, maintainers of Debian packages could just as easily mess up or release something malicious, but I at least get the impression that the bar is higher...
"End-users need to read and understand shell scripts to make sure they're safe" is a completely unacceptable threat model. The way I see it installing software from the AUR is about as safe as installing software from the pirate bay. Nevertheless, this distribution keeps getting discussed and recommended to people, with the AUR often cited as a reason to use it.
I mean 99.9% of the problems can be averted by just not installing some random new aur package with 0 votes or popularity.
The vast majority of packages an average user needs are built by arch anyways and aur by large is not nearly as needed. Still would take easily reviewable pkgbuilds over adding some random PPA as all too many ubuntu users tend to do or similar.
As someone who is an AUR maintainer with at least 150+ packages, I always dread seeing new AUR packages. A lot of people don't read the packaging guidelines, don't use tools like `namcap` and `extra-x86-64-build` to test their packages, nor do they read other PKGBUILDs to write their stuff. It's pure slop, and I have wasted too much of my time fixing shitty PKGBUILDs because I wanna use that piece of software
HN meta question: I noticed that the submission time of this submission recently got reset. Did this post get into some second chance thing?
> Build scripts should not run sudo or anything similar. If it does that anyway, it’s wrong. At best, it’s a packaging error, as sudo shouldn’t be expected to work in a non-interactive environment like a build chroot. Sometimes a packager mistakenly tries to move package files into place instead of adding them to the package.
Something I've noticed over time is that security and quality are connected, not inherently but in that there's a lot of overlap. Reviewing an AUR package should include making sure that it doesn't use sudo and doesn't move files into place directly because that's a possible flag for malicious behavior. But equally, sudo is unreliable in the build environment ("sudo shouldn’t be expected to work in a non-interactive environment like a build chroot"), and trying to directly place files instead of packaging them means the package won't upgrade, downgrade, or uninstall cleanly, and won't properly attribute files when you ask the system what owns them. I don't know how well it generalizes, but heuristically I've moved toward viewing security and quality as sufficiently overlapping that they can be treated as a single area.
> I've moved toward viewing security and quality as sufficiently overlapping that they can be treated as a single area.
Quality implies knowledge, understanding, and the willingness to use them. Security is the same, but for the narrowed domain of security best-practices and common vulnerabilities. It's possible for something superficially high-quality to be insecure, but that implies that whoever made it either has extremely lopsided experience, or left the vulnerabilities in intentionally or knowingly. Of course, security is a particularly tricky domain, so even a fairly talented and good-intentioned developer is likely to make some missteps. Those missteps, I'd say, qualify as lapses in quality. I'd be damned surprised, on the other hand, to find that something low-quality is secure, and would assume that any such security is the product of a happy accident or sheer simplicity of the software, and is more likely than not to be lost as it grows and changes.
This reminds me of Notepad
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I am really really weary of installing anything from "user" repos, whether it's AUR or Fedora copr. It feels like the wild west. Admittedly, maintainers of Debian packages could just as easily mess up or release something malicious, but I at least get the impression that the bar is higher...
The linked article (with the original incident) was really good:
https://www.mh4ckt3mh4ckt1c4s.xyz/blog/aur-chaos-malware-ana...
"End-users need to read and understand shell scripts to make sure they're safe" is a completely unacceptable threat model. The way I see it installing software from the AUR is about as safe as installing software from the pirate bay. Nevertheless, this distribution keeps getting discussed and recommended to people, with the AUR often cited as a reason to use it.
I mean 99.9% of the problems can be averted by just not installing some random new aur package with 0 votes or popularity.
The vast majority of packages an average user needs are built by arch anyways and aur by large is not nearly as needed. Still would take easily reviewable pkgbuilds over adding some random PPA as all too many ubuntu users tend to do or similar.
As someone who is an AUR maintainer with at least 150+ packages, I always dread seeing new AUR packages. A lot of people don't read the packaging guidelines, don't use tools like `namcap` and `extra-x86-64-build` to test their packages, nor do they read other PKGBUILDs to write their stuff. It's pure slop, and I have wasted too much of my time fixing shitty PKGBUILDs because I wanna use that piece of software