Is this because of the xz utils thing? The backdoor was included into the tarball, but it wasn’t in the git repo.
By switching away from tarballs they pribably hope to prevent that, although this article doesn’t mention that. It’s possible this shift has been happening since before the xz utils.
Did you post this right as I edited the title? Lol.
Late reply but I also recommend going through flathub for screenwriting apps if you want more. I saw some options that looked pretty good, although many were proprietary.
Not really? From this page, all it looks like you need is a salsa.debian.org account. They call this being a “Debian developer”, but registration on Debian Salsa is open to anybody, and you can just sign up.
Once you have an account, you can use Debian’s Debusine normally. I don’t really see how this is any different from being required to create an Ubuntu/Launchpad account for a PPA. This is really just pedantic terminology, Debian considers anybody who contributes to their distro in any way to be a “Debian Developer”, whereas Ubuntu doesn’t.
If you don’t want to create an account, you can self host debusine — except it looks like you can’t self host the server that powers PPA’s. I consider this to be a win for Debusine.
Make sure you stream with the “linux” tag so thag people who follow that tag around like me can find you!
Proxmox is based on debian, with it’s own virtualization packages and system services that do something very similar to what libvirt does.
Libvirr + virt manager also uses qemu kvm as it’s underlying virtual machine software, meaning performance will be identical.
Although perhaps there will be a tiny difference due to libvirt’s use of the more performant spice for graphics vs proxmox’s novnc but it doesn’t really matter.
The true minimal setup is to just use qemu kvm directly, but the virtual machine performance will be the same as libvirt, in exchange for a very small reduction in overhead.
Idk what to tell you. I linked to sources showing that flathub signs everything, and that flatpak refuses to install unsigned packages by default.
If you have anything contrary feel free to link it.
Also you multi replied to this comment. Sometimes I had this issue with eternity.
I have a similar setup, and even though I am hosting git (forgejo), I use ssh as a git server for the source of truth that k8s reads.
This prevents an ouroboros dependency where flux is using the git repo from forgejo which is deployed by flux…
From flahubs docs: https://docs.flathub.org/blog/app-safety-layered-approach-source-to-user#reproducibility--auditability
The build itself is signed by Flathub’s key, and Flatpak/OSTree verify these signatures when installing and updating apps.
This does not seem to be optional or up to the control of each developer or publisher who is using the flathub repos.
Of course, unless you mean packages via flatpak in general?
Hmmm, this is where my research leads me.
https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/flatpak-builder.html#signing
Though it generally isn’t recommended, it is possible not to use GPG verification. In this case, the --no-gpg-verify option should be used when adding the repository. Note that it is necessary to become root in order to update a repository that does not have GPG verification enabled.
Going further, I found a relevant github issue where a user is encountering an issue where flatpak is refusing to install a package that is not signed, and the user is asking for a cli flag to bypass this block.
I don’t really see how this is any different from apt refusing to install unsigned packages by default but allowing a command line flag (--allow-unauthenticated) as an escape hatch.
To be really pedantic, apt key signing is also optional, it’s just that apt is configured to refuse to install unsigned packages by default. So therefor all major repos sign their packages with GPG keys. Flatpak appears to follow this exact same model.
This is not true. Flatpaks from flathub are signed with a gpg key.
Now admittedly, they use a single release key for all their signing, which is much weaker than the traditional distro’s model of having multiple package maintainers sign off on a release.
But the packages are signed.
Edit: snaps are signed in a similar way.
sandboxing is not the best practice on Linux… So I’m better off with Qubes than with Secureblue
No, no, no.
It’s no that sandboxing is the best practice, it’s just that attempting to “stack” linux sandboxes is mostly ineffective. If I run kvm inside xen, I get more security. If I run a linux container inside a linux container, I only get the benefit of one layer. But linux sandboxes are good practice.
I do agree that secureblue sucks, but I don’t understand your focus on Qubes. To elaborate on my criticisms let me explain, with a reply to this comment:
Many CVE’s for Xen were discovered and patched by the Qubes folks, so that’s a good thing…
If really, really care about security, it’s not enough to “find and patch CVE’s”. The architecture of the software must be organized in such a way that certain classes of vulnerabilities are impossible — so no CVE’s exist in the first place. Having a lack of separation between different privilege levels turns a normal bug into a critical security issue.
Xen having so many CVE’s shows that is has some clear architectural flaws, and that despite technically being a “microkernel”, the isolation between the components is not enough to prevent privilege isolation flaws.
Gvisor having very few CVE’s over it’s lifespan shows it has a better architecture. Same for OpenBSD — despite having a “monolithic” kernel, I would trust openbsd more in many cases (will elaborate later).
Now, let’s talk about threat model. Personally, I don’t really understand your fears in this thread. You visited a site, got literally jumpscared (not even phised), and are now looking at qubes? No actual exploit was done.
You need to understand that the sandboxing that browsers use is one of the most advanced in existence currently. Browser escapes are mostly impossible… mostly.
In addition, you need to know that excluding openbsd, gvisor, and a few other projects almost all other projects will have a regular outpouring of CVE’s at varying rates, depending on how well they are architectured.
Xen is one of those projects. Linux is one of those projects. Your browser is one of those projects. Although I consider Linux a tier below in security, I consider Xen and browsers to exist at a similar tier of security.
What I’m trying to say, is that any organization/entity that is keeping a browser sandbox escape, will most definitely have a Linux privilege escalation vulnerability, and will probably also have a Xen escape and escalation vulnerability.
The qube with the browser might get compromised, but dom0 would stay safely offline, that’s my ideal, not the utopic notion of never possibly getting attacked and hacked.
This is just false. Anybody who is able to do the very difficult task of compromising you through the browser will probably also be able to punch through Xen.
not the utopic notion of never possibly getting attacked and hacked.
This is true actually. Browser exploits are worth millions or even tens of millions of dollars. And they can only really be used a few times before someone catches them and reports them so that they are patched.
Why would someone spend tens of millions of dollars to compromise you? Do you have information worth millions of dollars on your computer? It’s not a “utopic notion”, it’s being realistic.
If you want maximum browser security, disable javascript use chromium on openbsd. Chromium has slightly stronger sandboxing than firefox, although chromium mostly outputs CVE’s at the same rate as firefox. Where it really shines, is when combined with Openbsd’s sandboxing (or grapheneos’ for phones).
Sure, you can run Xen under that setup. But there will be no benefit, you already have a stronger layer in front of Xen.
TLDR: Your entire security setup is only actually as strong as your strongest layer/shield. Adding more layers doesn’t really offer a benefit. But trying to add stronger layers is a waste of your time because you aren’t a target.
Proxmox is based on debian and uses debian under the hood…
to answer your first question, kind of. Gvisor (by google btw) uses the linux kernels sandboxing to sandbox the gvisor process itself.
Distrobox also uses the linux kernels sandboxing, which is how linux based containers work.
Due to issues with the attack surface of the linux’s kernels sandboxing components, the ability to create sandboxing or containers inside sandboxes or containers is usually restricted.
What this means is that to use gvisor inside docker/podman (distrobox) you must either loosen the (kinda nonexistent) distrobox sandbox, or you must disable gvisors sandboxing that it applies to itself. You lose the benefit, and you would be better off just using gvisor alone.
It’s complicated, but basically the linux’s kernels containers/sandboxing features can’t really be “stacked”.
Care to elaborate? Proxmox’s paid tier is long term support for their older releaes, and paid support. The main code is entirely free, with no features gated behind paywalls or anything like that.
Check out turbowarp, an ultra fast reimplementation of scratch.
I’ve seen games that only worked in turbowarp.
Custom editors are probably needed.
Kde’s spectacle (screenshot utility) does this by default now.
I don’t see any mention of games so far.
A minecraft server is always a good time with friends, and there are hundreds of other game servers you can self host.
The backdoor of the xz utils program(s) was in the tarball release, but not the main source code:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
If debian had dodged the upstream tarball, then they wouldn’t have been affected by this.