this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2026
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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AUR "packages" are just a recipe file that runs some commands that sources packages from somewhere else and builds them then puts them in the format required by the AUR package manager.
Normally it's a source tarball downloaded directly from the project's Git repo. But it can also fetch and install a binary package (for closed source software). Or it can install Node modules, or Python modules etc.
Point is, you can't inject a script directly in AUR itself. You could add the malicious code directly to the recipe file but it would be obvious. You could also download a zip with the malware directly, but it would also be obvious.
So what they do is add the malware to modules published on another platform, and they're downloaded indirectly, as a dependency of the Nth grade.
It's very hard to detect, you can't really notice this kind of attack with a glance at the recipe.
I see. Thanks for the explanation.