2024-03-30 13:54:52

by Kees Cook

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [tech-board] [PATCH 00/11] xz: Updates to license, filters, and compression options

On Sat, Mar 30, 2024 at 02:48:48PM +0200, Lasse Collin wrote:
> On 2024-03-29 Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Fri, 29 Mar 2024 14:51:41 -0600 Jonathan Corbet <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > > Andrew (and anyone else), please do not take this code right now.
> > > >
> > > > Until the backdooring of upstream xz[1] is fully understood, we
> > > > should not accept any code from Jia Tan, Lasse Collin, or any
> > > > other folks associated with tukaani.org. It appears the domain,
> > > > or at least credentials associated with Jia Tan, have been used
> > > > to create an obfuscated ssh server backdoor via the xz upstream
> > > > releases since at least 5.6.0. Without extensive analysis, we
> > > > should not take any associated code. It may be worth doing some
> > > > retrospective analysis of past contributions as well...
> > > >
> > > > Lasse, are you able to comment about what is going on here?
> > >
> > > FWIW, it looks like this series has been in linux-next for a few
> > > days. Maybe it needs to come out, for now at least?
> >
> > Yes, I have removed that series.
>
> Thank you. None of these patches are urgent. I'm on a holiday and only
> happened to look at my emails and it seems to be a major mess.
>
> My proper investigation efforts likely start in the first days of
> April. That is, I currently know only a few facts which alone are bad
> enough.
>
> Info will be updated here: https://tukaani.org/xz-backdoor/

Thanks; I appreciate the update! And I'm sorry this has happened to you.
We'll all know more in the coming days. (I, too, am on vacation, wheee.)

-Kees

--
Kees Cook