`rua` and other similar CLIs make it really easy to review the packages before installing them from AUR too, and if you are doing banking on the same computer, you really have no excuse not to review the software you depend on. Keeping the amount of packages low, only use what you need, also makes this a whole lot simpler when it's time to upgrade.
I think this stance should be re-evaluated. Arch Linux developers are doing a fantastic job and I am personally thankful to them - this is not in any way critical of them. And while I don't see an easy solution here, I just feel that the time of "warning users" is long gone with how much supply-chain attacks are ramping up these days.
Some other controls could at least alleviate the problem. Perhaps some form of peer-review and grace period before publishing could help here?
I’m not sure how to find a balance. One reason to use Arch is to always have the latest software, especially if you’re gaming. (Need to run very recent kernels, GPU drivers, and DEs to support new graphics cards.) So that’s very different from other stable LTS distros which carefully pick the package updates they incorporate.
Anyways, I do agree package cooldowns and such make a lot of sense. Package managers should be pulling out the stops on all the free controls they can implement. I can understand why anything requiring compute or maintainer time is a non-starter. (Sidebar: I don’t feel the same way about npm. Microsoft can afford to run malware scanners and analysis tools on npm packages.)
It's basically GitHub (in terms of "User's generated content") but tailored and specific to Arch/Arch-derived distributions. Packages have owners, but everything is very "freeform" in general on the AUR. It wasn't uncommon you could be added as a maintainer by just sending a mail to the current maintainer, since it's basically "Hey let me contribute to your repository" (simplified), today people keep track a bit better and avoided that I've seen. But still, it's on a individual basis.
Just like GitHub, AUR is completely devoid of peer-reviews, users uploads their own PKGBUILD and share with others, and the expectation is that users review stuff before they install it, just like on GitHub, or just like on the internet in general.
At any time there's a large number of orphaned packages in the AUR, and the attacker(s) targeted those.
What review should users do?
It appears that, in some cases, these were adding npm as a dependency and installing atomic-lockfile, and in others, these were adding bun and installing js-digest. This was a mass attack against mostly low-use/orphaned/etc packages where maintainership was taken over or a different user uploaded a new version (itself a very simple, low-notice, low-oversight process), and many of the packages clearly had no connection to Node.js at all, so a user who knew enough about each package, and knew what npm was, might notice the oddity in the package, if they reviewed every line of the PKGBUILD, then reviewed the install scripts.
But legitimate AUR packages for packages connected to Node.js also use npm, for example, and at times, use npm install. A user would have to be familiar enough with Archlinux's build system to understand the difference between each part (eg, build() vs install scripts). They'd have to review every PKGBUILD, every install script, and every patch of every AUR package they install. For packages that actually do use npm/bun, they'd have to be familiar enough to know what uses were legitimate and what uses were not, and might have to be up to date on compromised dependencies. And this is still considering a mass attack that was not particularly hidden. Attacks could be made much harder to find.
Asking a user to safely review an AUR package essentially seems like it is asking them to fully understand not just the build process, and programming language, of the upstream package, but also all details of Archlinux's build system. They need to learn how to do this with, as far as I can tell, no real guidance: AUR itself, and the wiki's page on it, just warn that users should carefully review the PKGBUILD and install scripts, without giving any substantial guidance on what to look for or how to review anything. The warnings feel much more like liability-reduction than an attempt to be helpful.
At that point, what is AUR actually offering that installing the upstream package isn't? It feels like the suggested 'safe' way of using AUR would make it just as much work for the user, and require just as much knowledge, as either installing the upstream directly, or even making a package for it.
There is perhaps some room for LLM analysis here: Opus 4.8, Kimi latest, and even Qwen3.6 27B quickly catch at least the current round of malicious packages in my tests. But a motivated attacker could make that more difficult, or dangerous. And a user could also just have those models install the upstream package, with less risk. If they want to use pacman for management, they could likely even have those LLMs generate a package, with less risk.
The same sort of review you'd do if a stranger sends over a project and says "compile and run this" and you actually want whatever it's supposed to do, so you start looking through it.
> It appears that, in some cases, these were adding npm as a dependency and installing atomic-lockfile, and in others, these were adding bun and installing js-digest
That's very suspicious if the package you're about to install doesn't seem to actually need those things. Since "AUR === random strangers on the internet with zero trust", then you need to pay attention to those sort of things.
> Asking a user to safely review an AUR package essentially seems like it is asking them to fully understand not just the build process, and programming language, of the upstream package, but also all details of Archlinux's build system.
Yes, indeed. Same as if you come across a random C++ project on GitHub with 2 stars, do you just pull down the source and compile willy-nilly? Probably not, you carefully inspect it can actually do what you want, how it does it, and so on. AUR is basically like GitHub in this case, zero peer-reviews and users fully responsible for whatever they install.
> At that point, what is AUR actually offering that installing the upstream package isn't?
PKGBUILDs, so you don't have to write them yourself. Not more, not less, just a central place for random strangers to share PKGBUILDs that may or may not work for others.
In my experience using the AUR:
1. when you first install the package you can read the build script (and you should). These are in a very standard structure, and if the one you are reading is weird and complicated consider not installing it. No one is forcing you to. Almost every build script I read just downloads a build from a tagged github release.
2. when you get an upgrade you are shown the diff. For almost every AUR package I use this is literally just changing the $VERSION variable and the subsequent $HASH of the download. It is trivial to see if anything (in the AUR script) is happening that is sneaky.
It's really not that scary. And if it's considered scary, there are literally dozens of other linux distros (not to mention Windows or MacOS) you could be using instead.
It produces package files that pacman can use. Sure, you can curl|sh or whatever, but that's a good way to litter stuff all over that you can't track or uninstall cleanly.
I've installed stuff from the aur before but most of the times I prefer to skip the middleman and just navigate to the project website. A premade pkgbuild is not convenient enough to take the risk of typoquatting or the tactical npm or pip dependency.
(It's a bit vulnerable to it on first install, but so is 'just navigate to the project website [and click download]'.)
Git repo have been attacked other times in the past, but a 500/1000 stars project still sounds more trustworthy than a user repository managed by randos with a couple of upvotes. I still use the aur for simple cases, but when I see aur packages depending on multiple other aur packages I immediately leave.
The pacman wrappers you mention are crazy, though.
Also if the software is downloaded in the form of a git repo, you only needed to checkout the new tag and rebuild, don't need your browser at all.
Perfect demonstration!
Of course the process breaks down for a large amount of packets, but I've never been in that situation. In part because the official repo is already large, and in part because I like minimalism.
If that even became an issue, I would manage a personal set of pkgbuild probably.
Didn't find any quick info on how to check a system, so I ran the following command to find foreign packages and some date related infos:
> pacman -Qmi
Check the output against the list of affected packages.
Then, you can also grep for those files in various locations: > grep -rl "atomic-lockfile" / --include="package.json" --include="package-lock.json"
> grep -rl "atomic-lockfile" ~/.npm 2>/dev/null
> grep -i "atomic-lockfile" /var/log/pacman.log 2>/dev/null
Don't know if the packages delete themself after they run. I just wanted to provide some basic commands, as all the other infos I found didn't provide any help.
Who is doing package management right these days? Who is doing it securely?
Most distros are too. All the big distros have pretty good track records.
AUR is worse, in that there may not be official authors and you can take over releases of a package. Like, you’ll have random users publishing the release for some application that doesn’t have their own Arch release. And if that user disappears, someone else may take it over
Read the source. If you don't have the time then you shouldn't run the software.
All major Node package managers should support it by now.
Prom was the best IIRC, yarn second, but even npm is catching up
QBASIC. When you need a package you type it in from a magazine. Virtually anything you could ever need is only 1-12 weeks away.
Everything will need to be run in a VM separated from your main desktop which should have your data and a minimal amount of apps.
Qubes OS was ahead of it's time.
I never had a need for the AUR.
If I want a package not in the official repository I build it myself or if it has a binary release I will download it. this way i don't have to use root when building and can have program installed locally just for a single user which is how it should be anyway for most desktop use cases.
At least in this way there is one less level of possible malicious code insertion in developer -> user, vs develeper -> maintainer -> user.
It is hard to avoid a package like chromium [0] or firefox which are in the "community" repo. Now have fun check it at every update, this is not practically feasible.
For the web browser one can say we should use Flatpak anyway but there are a lot of other apps like sway from the community repo that cannot be flatpaked.
- [0] https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/package/edge/community/x86_64/c...
So with a dozen of various systems running arch/cachyos for various purposes, 0 impact.
We seriously dodged a bullet though, should we have some kind of AI spotting shady activity before it hits the userbase?
This was the AUR repository, which is the community-maintained soup of non-distro packages. They're packaged using the same tools and technology, with the intent that they can be easily validated and promoted to core stuff in the future. But they aren't really "Arch Linux". You need to deliberately enable and install tools to pull stuff from it.
Think of this as Steam or Chrome. You can install those on Arch, and people do, but if Chrome extensions or Steam games suffer an incident like this you don't blame the distro.
AUR comes with a warning that its up to you to check what you install from there.
Next up, "millions of malicious packages still not taken down on internet"
pacman -Qm