On the 16th of July, at around 8pm UTC+2, a malicious AUR package was uploaded to the AUR. Two other malicious packages were uploaded by the same user a few hours later. These packages were installing a script coming from the same GitHub repository that was identified as a Remote Access Trojan (RAT).
The affected malicious packages are:
- librewolf-fix-bin
- firefox-patch-bin
- zen-browser-patched-bin
The Arch Linux team addressed the issue as soon as they became aware of the situation. As of today, 18th of July, at around 6pm UTC+2, the offending packages have been deleted from the AUR.
We strongly encourage users that may have installed one of these packages to remove them from their system and to take the necessary measures in order to ensure they were not compromised.
According to the gamingonlinux discord, the following packages are also suspected to be compromised:
https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/minecraft-cracked/
https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/ttf-ms-fonts-all/
https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/vesktop-bin-patched/
https://aur.archlinux.org/pkgbase/ttf-all-ms-fonts/
If you have any of these packages installed, immediately delete it and check your system processes for a process called
systemd-initd(this is the RAT).Here is an analysis of the malicious payload: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/d9f0df8da6d66aaae024bdca26a228481049595279595e96d5ec615392430d67
Because, and I quote:
Thankfully, there’s a mailing list that covers issues like these. Heck, OP’s PSA was probably originally propagated from there.
I know its user produced content. But there are still rules that are enforced by Archteam and they host and link to it. And why not tell people about security issues? They could at least tell people in the news, so we can act accordingly. This is super disappointing. Is there any trustworthy RSS feed that covers this?