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.
Follow up
There are more packages with this malware found.
minecraft-crackedttf-ms-fonts-allvesktop-bin-patchedttf-all-ms-fonts
What to do
If you installed any of these packages, check your running processes for one named systemd-initd (this is the RAT).
The suspicious packages have a patch from this now-inaccessible Codeberg repo: https://codeberg.org/arch_lover3/browser-patch
The Arch maintainers have been informed of all this already and are investigating.
Aur is completely user controlled, it is not official and not trusted. Someone just decided to use those names and upload something.
To be clear, when projects distribute their software via the aur, someone else can’t just issue an update using their package name.
This person appended “fix” and “patched” to appear in searches next to legitimate packages, and seem worth installing instead.
Oof. Does this happen often?
To be clear, they created new packages with these names. Anyone can make anything available on the AUR, but you cannot issue updates under someone elses existing package name.
It’s a known risk.
Not what I asked.
The frequency of this happening does not inform you of the risk. Because there is no attestation it could happen rarely for some time and then suddenly a lot. Or the inverse. No way to tell.
It’s surprisingly rare imo