[sho_hn]

I assume they are advocating for package managers to preferably grab signed git tags from repositories rather than download tarballs.

The backdoor relied on the source in the tarballs being different from the git tag, adding additional script code. This is common for projects that uses GNU autotools as build system; maintainers traditionally run autoconf so that users don't have to and ship the results in the tarballs.

I agree that this should be discouraged, and that distros should, when possible, at least verify that tarbal contents are reproducible / match git tags when importing new versions.

[account42]

I think saying that the backdoor relied on it is too strong. The changes were obfuscated enough that it's unlikely anyone would have noticed if they were pushed to git, not doing that is just an additional layer of safety.

[bilekas]

Correct. The onus should be now be on the package delivery to provide transperant packages maybe? Maybe add the extra step of pulling instead of trusting the push from maintainers? It's just an extra step the might get more eyes. All said, even in hindsight I wouldn't have called this one out.