[yowo]

This is like saying a user who clone a random git repo is not to blame and git-scm should do more to prevent cloning of malicious repos. If it is not official, it is your job to review, if you dont like it, use iOS instead of Arch Linux.

If you crash your car, you are liable for the accident. If you aren't ready for that, take the bus.

More power = more responsibility

[badgersnake]

> If you crash your car, you are liable for the accident.

Because I didn’t go through all the blueprints and find the flaw that led to the crash. This is a dumb argument. It’s also the one the AUR appears to be making.

[homebrewer]

No, it's completely valid. The arch home page warns you that you're the one responsible for your system, and get to keep both pieces when something breaks. Everything is assembled with this philosophy in mind. This message is reinforced ten times more before the system is even installed and is up and running.

If this is not for you, that's fine, but it's been working very well for some of us for... decades, at this point? I'm not amused by the amount of people here wanting to turn arch into another Ubuntu, most of them having zero familiarity with how the AUR works, or arch more generally.

[Barrin92]

>but it's been working very well for some of us for... decades, at this point?

but it's worth asking why it's been working well. Has it been working well simply because it's been a niche ecosystem, or even because you wouldn't have known if it didn't because nobody did security audits?

The Arch distribution model, which operates like the Javascript ecosystem, as in having a barebones core and then a zoo of unregulated third party community packages does not seem fine these days. As it became more popular it has naturally drawn attention and from that moment on you're just screwed because you have no security infrastructure. Arch pretty much lived off security through obscurity.

And in particular with the popularity of these spin offs, I forgot what the name of the tiling wm thing is that got very popular, I think a lot of users are not aware that they're doing the software equivalent of buying medicine off craigslist

[embedding-shape]

> The Arch distribution model, which operates like the Javascript ecosystem, as in having a barebones core and then a zoo of unregulated third party community packages does not seem fine these days

It's hard to take the rest of your comment seriously when you don't seem to have a basic understanding of the parts involved here. Arch's distribution model isn't at all like npm (which I guess is what you're actually talking about here), but the AUR specifically is pretty similar to npm. But the AUR isn't Arch's main distribution model, and the official Arch repositories contain a ton of packages in the core, so not even the "barebones core" is correct here.

Arch has pretty much lived off the experience of its users, which is the entire purpose and value-proposition of the OS. You want someone else to be responsible, you're welcome to use the countless of other distributions, Arch is quite literally not the OS for a "Don't read anything and press Update, hope for the best" experience, and I hope the core team continues to push back against that, which they've done for decades at this point.

It's sad, because overall you have a point somewhere there but the big misconceptions kind of hide that message though.

[Barrin92]

>But the AUR isn't Arch's main distribution model, and the official Arch repositories contain a ton of packages in the core, so not even the "barebones core" is correct here.

I don't think that narrative is supported by the numbers. Arch's repositories are about a magnitude smaller than either the AUR or "batteries included" distributions like Debian. (about 10k to 100k packages), there are more people using Arch derivatives than arch, and according to some community polls, granted I can't verify their methodology, something north of 90% of arch users use the AUR.

If you look at the most popular packages in the AUR, it's the most popular web browsers, virtually every VPN client, popular professional software like davinci, incredibly popular messaging clients, Spotify, Zoom, billion+ userbase software and the vast majority of password managers.

And if you look at who maintains those, it isn't the company, in many cases it's a random pseudonymous user who doesn't show up on Google. And I don't get this strange aggressive tone of suggesting I use something else. I do already, because as should be obvious I think that's a bonkers security model, but it deserves to be pointed out.

I do not think that the majority of people running arch today in practice realizes that their password manager they installed from that repo everyone uses is managed by an absolutely random person on the internet.

[embedding-shape]

> I don't think that narrative is supported by the numbers

Why are you looking at numbers? Arch Linux's official way of distributing software to it's users are the repositories called "core", "extra" and "multilib", anything else than those are "unofficial" and user's responsibility to how they handle it. No need to look at any numbers, literally go to Arch Linux's website and read how it works if you don't know since before.

> there are more people using Arch derivatives than arch

May be, find it hard to believe that's true outside of gaming, but regardless, that doesn't mean suddenly the AUR becomes safe. And if the complaint is about how these Arch-derivitives educate their users, go to their message boards and share this, that has little to do with Arch Linux itself, literally why there are multiple distributions in the first place.

> something north of 90% of arch users use the AUR.

Yes, like me, and probably every other Arch Linux user. I'm sure every developer on macOS at one time uses the terminal, does that mean "rm -rf" suddenly needs to go away?

> it's a random pseudonymous user who doesn't show up on Google

So what, why it matters? All that matters is that the package does what you expect, and use official sources if that's the point. My password manager's AUR package is built by someone I don't even recall the username of, is this a problem in practice? No, because I do what my OS tells me and reviews random 3rd party software I download from the internet. Every time I upgrade, I see that the only thing changing is the URL which points to the official domain, and a content-hash, that's it. The user could be a pirate in Somalia for all I care.

> I do not think that the majority of people running arch today in practice realizes that their password manager they installed from that repo everyone uses is managed by an absolutely random person on the internet.

I think if you look at a certain sub-section of users who install and do things without thinking, you're absolutely correct. But I don't think the rest of the user base who uses Arch for the very value proposition it offers, should suffer because there is a small sub-section of users who install OSes based on what influencers are pushing to their viewers today.

[naturalmovement]

Uh but this isn't random git repos these are packages available through the OS's repos. Why does the AUR even exist if not for malware distribution?

It's an uncontrolled free-for-all disguised as a watering hole. If they can't do the most basic of housekeeping it should not exist full stop.

[zeta0134]

They *are* doing the basic housekeeping. What do you think this announcement is, if not exactly that? AUR is very clearly documented as user-submitted, and automatic installs from it are heavily discouraged by the maintainers for this reason. Malware aside, there is very little quality control, and a poorly made AUR has the potential to break the system pretty badly. (Though, in my experience, most of the useful AUR packages are trivial to remove if something goes wrong.)

The officially maintained repositories (which are part of a default installation) were not affected. Users need to go somewhat out of their way to use an AUR.

The definition files are all plain text and not especially complicated. It's not too difficult to glance at the file before doing an install to get a basic idea of what it's about to do, just like you should do when running a random shell script or cloning a random git repo. Indeed, most AURs are implemented by cloning an upstream git repo and configuring it so it can be built. The same basic threat model applies: Do you trust the install script? Do you trust the upstream URL whose code it is about to compile?

[a-dub]

i read all the pkgbuild diffs, still doesn't give me a good sense. sure, i can verify that it's coming from the official repo but even then there's no guarantee that there isn't junk in there or that the git ref is actually pointing at the right thing.

it would be better if there were stronger community moderation and review that has stamps i can trust rather than this idea that eyeballing build scripts is a reasonable security posture.

[embedding-shape]

> it would be better if there were stronger community moderation and review that has stamps i can trust rather than this idea that eyeballing build scripts is a reasonable security posture.

Ok, so instead of having a reasonable security posture yourself, you'd rather rely on a number of random strangers who've eyeballed the PKGBUILD instead?

Generally, I think Arch tries to prevent users from relying on bad signals, and this principle might be applied here too.

> i read all the pkgbuild diffs, still doesn't give me a good sense. sure,

Do you have an example of a diff that doesn't give a good sense? I review all my diffs too, but I feel like all of them give me a good sense if it's safe to install or not. I mean, why would I otherwise, what's the point in reviewing if you don't use it to make a decision if to install it or not?

[a-dub]

pretty much all of them. the diffs only really show that it's coming from the same source, the changed hash and maybe some urls for some patches. actually looking at what is in that changed hash is a much more complicated story. this gives end users a false sense of security ("i read the diffs" -- not really), and attackers a clean vector (all it takes is one bad commit that might not even be on a real branch, or linked patch or late download dependency in the package itself).

[embedding-shape]

> the diffs only really show that it's coming from the same source

What else do you have to review? Both in the cases of binaries and source, the idea is that you trust upstream already, otherwise you shouldn't install software from them. And since you trust upstream, the only thing you need to review in the PKGBUILD is quite literally: Where is this stuff coming from, is it the official domain/repository? Are there other non-official dependencies? Are there patches applied?

Once you've reviewed those, you're done, and as safe as if you installed straight from upstream, zero false sense of security here.

You're mixing concerns here, as what you describe is completely different issue.

[zyuiop]

Well ArchLinux has a product for you if you want packages that were vetted: the official repositories. AUR is just a centralized place to put user created packages, like npm is a place to put user created node packages.

[matheusmoreira]

Nothing is "disguised" here. Arch Linux makes an enormous effort to warn that due dilligence is required before installing things, and to dissuade users from using the User Repository at all, to the point of not offering package manager support for it. The wiki even cites previous instances where malware was discovered in the AUR packages.

The only way you could possibly not be aware of the AUR's nature as an "uncontrolled free-for-all" is if you didn't read the Arch Wiki, and anyone who doesn't read the Arch Wiki should not be using Arch Linux to begin with.

"Uncontrolled free-for-all" is exactly the status quo of programming language package managers such as npm and pip. It's just as easy for total randoms to sign up for an account and push packages on those services as it is to push a package to the AUR. Only the AUR made the lack of trust explicit and part of the culture.

[Hackbraten]

> these are packages

PKGBUILDs are not packages. They’re (user-contributed) instructions on how to build packages.

> available through the OS's repos.

No. The AUR is a platform, similarly to NPM or PyPI, that allows users to upload PKGBUILDs. It is not part of “the OS’s repos,” and it says that loud and clear, multiple times, including on the front page.