This was a sophisticated attack happening over 2 years, from knowing the current maintainer was emotionally vulnerable to the structure of using the build system to introduce the patched code to Linux distro repos.
I’m guessing Kaspersky will come to the same conclusions many others have; that this was a state actor or similiarly well heeled group.
Ngl kaspersky is the close to the last group I care to hear from about security
https://www.techopedia.com/news/kasperskys-us-ban-a-long-history-of-espionage-kgb-nsa-and-edward-snowden
Right. After posting this I saw the blog post by jfrog, which seems to do a very good job : https://jfrog.com/blog/xz-backdoor-attack-cve-2024-3094-all-you-need-to-know/
Well, it doesn’t invalidate the analysis.
This was a sophisticated attack happening over 2 years, from knowing the current maintainer was emotionally vulnerable to the structure of using the build system to introduce the patched code to Linux distro repos.
I’m guessing Kaspersky will come to the same conclusions many others have; that this was a state actor or similiarly well heeled group.
First time I’ve seen somebody acknowledge that it’s not just nation states with such capabilities. There are some huge organized crime syndicates.
But from what I’ve seen cybersec is mostly about blaming Russia/China/DPRK
Kaspersky is more trustworthy than CIA and Washington propaganda machinery on security matters.