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XZ Hack - "If this timeline is correct, it’s not the modus operandi of a hobbyist. [...] It wouldn’t be surprising if it was paid for by a state actor." (lcamtuf.substack.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Thought this was a good read exploring some how the "how and why" including several apparent sock puppet accounts that convinced the original dev (Lasse Collin) to hand over the baton.

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[–] [email protected] 121 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Careful choice of program to infect the whole Linux ecosystem
Time it took to gain trust
Level of sophistication in introducing backdoor in open source product

All of these are signs of persistent threat actors aka State sponsor hacker. Though the real motive we would never know as it's now a failed project.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 7 months ago (1 children)

imagine how pissed they are. or maybe they silently alerted the microsoft guy themselves as they only did it for cash and theyd been paid

[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I am sure most super powers in the world can easily sink 2 years to maintain an obscure project in order to break system as important as openssh.

I doubt they will be pissed for one failure, and we can only hope there isn't more vulnerable projects out there (spoiler alert: probably many).