Pack
| Pack | VaRA-Tool-Suite | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | |
| 234 | 13 | |
| 10.7% | - | |
| 6.0 | 8.1 | |
| about 2 months ago | 5 days ago | |
| Pascal | Python | |
| Apache License 2.0 | BSD 2-clause "Simplified" License |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
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Pack
-
Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server compromise
The `pack`[0] compression utility that reached the HN front page the other day[1] is setting off my alarm bells right now. (It was at the time too, but now doubly so)
It's written in Pascal, and the only (semi-)documented way to build it yourself is to use a graphical IDE, and pull in pre-compiled library binaries (stored in the git repo of a dependency which afaict Pack is the only dependent of - appears to be maintained by the same pseudonymous author but from a different account).
I've opened an issue[2] outlining my concerns. I'm certainly not accusing them of having backdoored binaries, but if I was setting up a project to be deliberately backdoorable, it'd look a lot like this.
[0] https://pack.ac/
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39793805
[2] https://github.com/PackOrganization/Pack/issues/10
VaRA-Tool-Suite
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Backdoor in upstream xz/liblzma leading to SSH server compromise
I tried to understand the significance of this (parent maybe implied that they reused a completely fictitious identity generated by some test code), and I think this is benign.
That project just includes some metadata about a bunch of sample projects, and it links directly to a mirror of the xz project itself:
https://github.com/se-sic/VaRA-Tool-Suite/blob/982bf9b9cbf64...
I assume it downloads the project, examines the git history, and the test then ensures that the correct author name and email addresses are recognized.
(that said, I haven't checked the rest of the project, so I don't know if the code from xz is then subsequently built, and or if this other project could use that in an unsafe manner)
What are some alternatives?
rust1 - rust1
stencil-golang - Template repository for Golang applications
tukaani-project