[daymanstep]

I think that depends on the context. If you're maintaining one of the most widely used packages that is directly linked to by libsystemd and is included by pretty much every Linux distro as part of the base system? Then maybe some measure of paranoia is justified.

I think the OpenBSD developers are right to be as paranoid as they are. Anyone who is maintaining a security critical system should be on guard against these kinds of attacks.

[racingmars]

> If you're maintaining one of the most widely used packages that is directly linked to by libsystemd and is included by pretty much every Linux distro as part of the base system? Then maybe some measure of paranoia is justified.

But whose problem is that? systemd chose to link against liblzma, not the other way around. I doubt the xz maintainer(s) make money off of the project, and I'm assuming it's a spare-time/side-project type thing. Why should the fact that the library is included in every distro and is a dependency of systemd affect the xz maintainers' obligations? The leader of systemd has been variously employed by RedHat and Microsoft... if they're choosing to pull in an external dependency for systemd and then making money off of selling their Linux distros/cloud services, it would seem they're the ones that could afford to take on the burden of reviewing everything with a fine-toothed comb, not the xz maintaners.

[NarcissistDev]

I like your thinking. Absolutely. And very true. Even the folk who put the backdoor in will be getting paid. Everybody making bank, except Lasse.

[waihtis]

Oh absolutely true for things like OpenBSD and such

[NarcissistDev]

Thing is, sec should be taken seriously across the board. I love what OpenBSD devs did - they seen an entire community of naive coders who didn’t give much of a crap about security and started something. I have used OpenBSD for 10 years and thoroughly recommend it to anyone to give you a good slap around the face for how shit is done right.

[waihtis]

I sort of agree, I think we should collectively raise the level of paranoia slight, by some tens of percentages, to remove a lot of negative outcomes - but I wouldn't expect off-hand hobby devs to even remotely apply the same level of risk management as OpenBSD does.