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Simplifying the Xz Backdoor
Step by step I simplify the beginning of the xz backdoor so there’s no doubt of what it does.
My past successes gave me the confidence to give a try to simplify one aspect of the xz backdoor: the installation of the hooks, but oh boy was I unprepared. Based on the above we can guess the malicious developers used an RPM-based distribution, because the precise combination of config.guess=2022-01-09 and config.sub=2021-12-25 doesn’t match either what is in the automake 1.16.5 release or autotools-dev 20220109.1. In discussions online I heard the argument that it’s easy to check the tarball, all packagers need to do is install the same version of “autotools”.
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