this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024

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Malicious KDE theme can wipe out all your data (www.reddit.com)

submitted 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Or is it just buggy?

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (2 children)

@Pantherina
Yeah, by the same logic lets also call hotdogs dangerous because people have also choked on them!

https://nypost.com/2023/07/11/4-year-old-girl-dies-after-choking-on-costco-hot-dog-report/

At some point we should understand and agree that PEBKAC is a real thing. Logic dictates not to blame Linux and hotdog, and instead understand the consequence of using unverified/unvetted software.

@Bro666

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Well, yes: the store does advise caution, as we have little control over themes and widgets uploaded by their parties. The same way we would advise caution about running random software downloaded from the internet. That said, it does say KDE Store, so we should have some degree of control over it for our users' sake. That is what we are working on.

That said part II, we can't do with it the wider communities support. There simply isn't the human resources necessary. The 2 options we have are to close down the store completely (but then people will just go to random GitHub repos and download stuff from there), or try to leverage the community to help us locate and remove (or at least quarantine) dodgy products.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

@Bro666

One obvious fact that I though would never need to be reiterated (but here we are):

Almost all OpenSource licenses approved by OSI and/or FSF have "Disclaimer of Warranty" clause in one way or another. This is from MIT:

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT.

https://opensource.org/license/mit

More examples:
https://opensource.org/license/gpl-3-0#section15

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

And this too. I mean, it is not like it is the fine print either. They capitalise the whole paragraph.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Absolutely, and I would like to help with that.

But I think there are multiple parts to this:

Fix the backends so that for example dolphin extensions are directly installed in the correct way and dont even need such scripts
Restrict extensions and themes to be nonexecutable at least by default
Involve the community to mark "dangerous addons" that need executable scripts to install themselves or work; and to report malicious addons; and to add an enforced test before the addon is published

Of course a dolphin extension always executes code. I think hiring a bunch of KDE users as pretesters could work, to enforce that every extension needs to be tested by the 2 community members to end up in the store. There could also always be a way to unhide untested addons etc.

And enforcing stricter guidelines for the extensions is also important of course

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

This makes no sense.

The equivalent would be

A: have a hotdog you buy, which you eat with your teeth and your gut and you know how to do it (and also that hotdog doesnt interfere with your body, its a theme not actual molecules that comparison still makes no sense)

B: have a hotdog that decides how it is eaten, and manipulates your body to eat it in any arbitrary way

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@Pantherina
I'm sorry that this bug have happened.

But did you, or whoever faced this bug, "eat" it with your "teeth" though? No they didn't. Why? Because like any proprietary software, OpenSource tools also come with certain terms and conditions that user is expected to read, digest, understand, accept, and then utilize the tool:

https://fosstodon.org/@Mehrad/112128648273530651

User had all the possible chance in the world to read the code and make sure it doesn't do what it's not supposed to do.
🧵👇

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yes for sure, but Firefox, Android etc are also all opensource and allow to install only opensource components, still their model is way more secure.

But for sure, KDE will never become as restricted, as otherways these extensions would not exist.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

@Pantherina
I agree, although there are three things worth mentioning:

The conventional Android is not that opensource. It is bundled with tons of proprietary Google stuff. That's why de-googled Android does not provide as smooth experience.
Android does not restrict you to "only OpenSource" components. WhatsApp for example is widely used and is not FLOSS.

🧵 👇🏼

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Degoogled Android is just as possible. There are nearly all the tools needed (apart from system level stuff like backups) that work without many privileges or with a fine grained permission system
Never said that, but its security allows you to use random stuff and not fear malware. GrapheneOS just does the last % to complete it, like storage and contact scopes.