At the moment, it’s unknown if there was ever a real-world person behind this username or if Jia Tan is a completely fabricated individual.
Well, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a platypus. There was definitely one or more real-world people behind this. I doubt anyone thinks that their name is actually Jia Tan, though.
The industry has too long neglected the true threat posed to information security by the platypi.
Platypodes
Specifically, SSH logins were consuming too many CPU cycles and were generating errors with valgrind, a utility for monitoring computer memory.
Through sheer luck and Freund’s careful eye, he eventually discovered the problems were the result of updates that had been made to xz Utils. On Friday, Freund took to the Open Source Security List to disclose the updates were the result of someone intentionally planting a backdoor in the compression software.
It is lucky that Andres Freund checked and found the issue in valgrind that was maybe intentionally or maybe unintentionally.
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/03/29/4
I’m interested in figuring out what happened and more information on the contributor behind the attack.
to me: the most chilling thing is that someone involved in the open source ecosystem introduced this vulnerability and, if it was intentional, what else did they do?
That’s what I’m most curious about. Was it government? Was it Microsoft, Apple or Google? Was it some lone hacker or group looking for money? Was it just an OSS developer that wanted revenge? It would make for a spicy story.
It isn’t if it was intentional. It was intentional. Otherwise the exploit chain wouldn’t be so convoluted.
