xz VS openconnect

Very funny. This one:

https://github.com/tukaani-project/xz/commits?author=thesame...

> 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;

The valgrind fix in 5.6.1 overwrites the same test files used in 5.6.0 instead of using the injection code's extension hooks. This is done with what should have been a highly suspicious commit: https://github.com/tukaani-project/xz/commit/6e636819e8f0703... - this replaces "random" test files with other "random" test files. The state reson is questionable to begin but not including the seed used when the the purpoted reason was to be able to re-create the files in the future is highly suspicous. This should have raised red flags bug no one was watching. I'd say this is another part of the operation that was much more sloppy than it needed to be.

In https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/revision/e446ab7...

You're right, but maybe because there's nothing to see : https://github.com/tukaani-project/xz

A lot of software (including https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect of which I'm a maintainer) uses libxml2, which in turn transitively links to libzma, using it to load and store compressed XML.

I'm not *too* worried about OpenConnect given that we use `libxml2` only to read and parse uncompressed XML…

But I am wondering if there has been any statement from libxml2 devs (they're under the GNOME umbrella) about potential risks to libxml2 and its users.

From the article:

> Ubiquitous presence of HTTPS allows you to pass your data through very restrictive middle boxes!

This is, in fact, why all — or nearly all — proprietary VPN protocols (so-called "SSL VPNs") implement a mode that initiates a tunnel via HTTPS, at least as a fallback if not as the primary mode of operation: precisely in order to have a mode of operation that works with almost any connection to the global Internet.

I'm one of the main developers of https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect, which implements many such protocols, and wrote https://github.com/dlenski/what-vpn, which sniffs or identifies even more flavors of TLS-based VPN servers.

Found the solution: It's as simple, as changing the user agent with --useragent=AnyConnect. This is ridiculous. https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect/-/issues/544

Source: I am one of the lead developers of OpenConnect, a popular open-source client for many corporate VPNs, and have done all of the above.

Be careful you're not using an illicit fork. https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect

I personally have an openconnect server, and I patched their client to let me specify the SNI, (it's set to the server's hostname by default (https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect/-/blob/master/gnutls.c#L2366), but it's optional in the anyconnect protocol spec)

Thank you, trying openconnect for multiple hours, but cannot auth, created issue about that https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect/-/issues/446

If this is for anything other than AnyConnect I feel like you're better off with a t4g.nano running OpenVPN. If it's AnyConnect, you can run OpenConnect.

I had similar issue with Fortinet VPN. Try using something like https://gitlab.com/openconnect/openconnect. Run this from terminal to connect to VPN when needed. If this doesn't work search for global protect open source and there are other options.