systemd
nixpkgs
systemd | nixpkgs | |
---|---|---|
517 | 975 | |
12,516 | 15,753 | |
1.6% | 2.8% | |
10.0 | 10.0 | |
about 20 hours ago | 1 day ago | |
C | Nix | |
GNU General Public License v3.0 only | MIT License |
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
systemd
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Run0 – systemd based alternative to sudo announced
> 3. even `adduser` will not allow it by default
5. useradd does allow it (as noted in a comment). 6. Local users are not the only source, there things like LDAP and AD.
7. POSIX allows it:
* https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/6237#issuecomment-...
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Systemd Rolling Out "run0" As sudo Alternative
> I for one love to type out 13 extra characters
FWIW, systemd is normally pretty good at providing autocomplete suggestions, so even if you don't want to set up an alias you'll probably just have to type `--b ` to set it.
> I wonder what random ASCII escape sequences we can send.
According to the man page source[0]:
> The color specified should be an ANSI X3.64 SGR background color, i.e. strings such as `40`, `41`, …, `47`, `48;2;…`, `48;5;…`
and a link to the relevant Wikipedia page[1]. Given systemd's generally decent track record wrt defects and security issues, and the simplicity of valid colour values, I expect there's a fairly robust parameter verifier in there.
In fact, given the focus on starting the elevated command in a highly controlled environment, I'd expect the colour codes to be output to the originating terminal, not forwarded to the secure pty. That way, the only thing malformed escapes can affect is your own process, which you already have full control over anyway.
(Happy to be shown if that's a mistaken expectation though.)
[0] https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/main/man/run0.xml
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code#SGR_(Select_G...
- Crash-only software: More than meets the eye
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Systemd Wants to Expand to Include a Sudo Replacement
bash & zsh are supported by upstream: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/tree/main/shell-completio...
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"Run0" as a Sudo Replacement
the right person to replace sudo, not: https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/6237
PS: https://pwnies.com/systemd-bugs/
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Linux fu: getting started with systemd
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/issues/32028#issuecomment...
There are some very compelling arguments made there if you care to read them
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Ubuntu 24.04 (and Debian) removed libsystemd from SSH server dependencies
Maybe it was because you weren't pointing out anything new?
There was a pull request to stop linking libzma to systemd before the attack even took place
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/31550
This was likely one of many things that pushed the attackers to work faster, and forced them into making mistakes.
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Systemd minimizing required dependencies for libsystemd
The PR for changing compression libraries to use dlopen() was opened several weeks before the xz-utils backdoor was revealed.
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/31550
- Going in circles without a real-time clock
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The xz sshd backdoor rabbithole goes quite a bit deeper
I find this the most plausible explanation by far:
* The highly professional outfit simply did not see teknoraver's commit to remove liblzma as standard dependency of systemd build scripts coming.
* The race was on between their compromised code and that commit. They had to win it, with as large a window as possible.
* This caused serious errors.
* The performance regression is __not__ big. It's lucky Andres caught it at all. It's also not necessarily all that simple to remove it. It's not simply a bug in a loop or some such.
* The payload of the 'hack' contains fairly easy ways for the xz hackers to update the payload. They actually used it to remove a real issue where their hackery causes issues with valgrind that might lead to discovering it, and they also used it to release 5.6.1 which rewrites significant chunks; I've as yet not read, nor know of any analysis, as to why they changed so much.
Extra info for those who don't know:
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/3fc72d54132151c131...
That's a commit that changes how liblzma is a dependency of systemd. Not because the author of this commit knew anything was wrong with it. But, pretty much entirely by accident (although removing deps was part of the point of that commit), almost entirely eliminates the value of all those 2 years of hard work.
And that was with the finish line in sight for the xz hackers: On 24 feb 2024, the xz hackers release liblzma 5.6.0 which is the first fully operational compromised version. __12 days later systemd merges a commit that means it won't work__.
So now the race is on. Can they get 5.6.0 integrated into stable releases of major OSes _before_ teknoraver's commit that removes liblzma's status as direct dep of systemd?
I find it plausible that they knew about teknoraver's commit _just before_ Feb 24th 2024 (when liblzma v5.6.0 was released, the first backdoored release), and rushed to release ASAP, before doing the testing you describe. Buoyed by their efforts to add ways to update the payload which they indeed used - March 8th (after teknoraver's commit was accepted) it was used to fix the valgrind issue.
So, no, I don't find this weird, and I don't think the amateurish aspects should be taken as some sort of indication that parts of the outfit were amateuristic. As long as it's plausible that the amateuristic aspects were simply due to time pressure, it sounds like a really bad idea to make assumptions in this regard.
nixpkgs
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Nix: The Breaking Point
I don't think so. The article is probably intended for the Nix community, so the author doesn't need to convince HN that something is going on. If as an outsider you are interested then you need to look into it yourself, the community has no obligation to make their internal conflicts legible to the outside world.
As an outsider myself, it certainly looks like something is going on as more than 20 Nixpkg maintainers left in a week: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=label%3A%228.has%3...
- Maintainers Leaving
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Air Force picks Anduril, General Atomics to develop unmanned fighter jets
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commits?author=neon-sunset
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Eelco Dolstra's leadership is corrosive to the Nix project
I see two signers in the top 6 displayed on https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/graphs/contributors
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3rd Edition of Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ by Stroustrup
For a single file script, nix can make the package management quite easy: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/doc/languages-f...
For example,
```
- NixOS/nixpkgs: There isn't a clear canonical way to refer to a specific package
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NixOS Is Not Reproducible
Yes, Nix doesn't actually ensure that the builds are deterministic. In fact it works just fine if they aren't. There are packages in nixpkgs that aren't reproducible: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aiss...
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The xz attack shell script
I'm not familiar with Bazel, but Nix in it's current form wouldn't have solved this attack. First of all, the standard mkDerivation function calls the same configure; make; make install process that made this attack possible. Nixpkgs regularly pulls in external resources (fetchUrl and friends) that are equally vulnerable to a poisoned release tarball. Checkout the comment on the current xz entry in nixpkgs https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/master/pkgs/tools/comp...
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Debian Git Monorepo
NixOS uses a monorepo and I think everyone's love it.
I love being able to easily grep through all the packages source code and there's regularly PRs that harmonizes conventions across many packages.
Nixpkgs doesn't include the packaged software source code, so it's a lot more practical than what Debian is doing.
https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs
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From xz to ibus: more questionable tarballs
In this specific case, nix uses fetchFromGitHub to download the source archive, which are generated by GitHub for the specified revision[1]. Arch seems to just download the tarball from the releases page[2].
[1]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/3c2fdd0a4e6396fc310a6e...
[2]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/ib...
What are some alternatives?
openrc - The OpenRC init system
asdf - Extendable version manager with support for Ruby, Node.js, Elixir, Erlang & more
tini - A tiny but valid `init` for containers
Home Manager using Nix - Manage a user environment using Nix [maintainer=@rycee]
inotify-tools - inotify-tools is a C library and a set of command-line programs providing a simple interface to inotify.
git-lfs - Git extension for versioning large files
s6 - The s6 supervision suite.
easyeffects - Limiter, compressor, convolver, equalizer and auto volume and many other plugins for PipeWire applications
earlyoom - earlyoom - Early OOM Daemon for Linux
spack - A flexible package manager that supports multiple versions, configurations, platforms, and compilers.
supervisor - Supervisor process control system for Unix (supervisord)
waydroid - Waydroid uses a container-based approach to boot a full Android system on a regular GNU/Linux system like Ubuntu.