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.
the firefox, zen browser and libre wolf packages are concerning. The ttf ms font too. Those are very normal apps and unless you pay attention to the package name when doing “pacman -Syu”, you would fall for the malware.
If only we can compartmentalize all AUR packages. The download AUR sources iirc are already in something like $HOME/.paru. Installing is a different story, because these packages can put their executable all over the places: /usr/local/bin, $HOME/local/bin.
With respect, you wouldn’t install these by just doing an update, so
pacman -Syuis fine.You would have needed to install these manually, or a package that depended on them - both from AUR - so you’d also need to use
yay(etc) to install them.But - I totally agree with your points that tge names look innocent enough for someone to install those over other packages.
Always look at the AUR (website) at the package details - if it’s new(ish) and has 0 or 1 votes, then be suspicious.
at this point you’ll be reinventing Flatpak