Backdoor found in widely used Linux utility breaks encrypted SSH connections
arstechnica.com
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Malicious code planted in xz Utils has been circulating for more than a month.

TL;DR there was a backdoor found in the XZ program. All major distros have been updated but it is recommended that you do a fresh install on systems that are exposed to the internet and that had the bad version of the program. Only upstream distros were affected.

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What does this have to do with systemd? Aren’t they safer in this situation because they aren’t using the beta xz release?

My systems running Debian stable with systemd also aren’t affected…

This particular backdoor affects sshd on systems that use libsystemd for logging.

your Debian system is probably not affected because Debian stable doesn’t update packages very quickly. You’re probably on an older release of the backdoored package.

You’re probably on an older release of the backdoored package.

Nope, Debian uses a version from before the backdoor

The reason openssh links liblzma in the first place is to enable a systemd feature, so naturally “systemd bad, it’s proximity to a security issue is yet more proof that a pile of shell scripts in a trenchcoat is a superior init system” etc

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