Fwupd Will Use Zstd Compression
Fwupd Will Use Zstd Compression
Linux firmware update utility fwupd is moving away from XZ Utils and will use zstd (Zstandard) for future releases for compressing metadata.
Linux Firmware Update Utility Fwupd Will Use Zstd Compression for Future Releases
The devs are also considering enforcing signed commits in an attempt to prevent supply chain issues like the XZ backdoor.
Edit: note for downvotes: I understand some of you disagree with the need for a switch. However, are you downvoting the news itself (i.e. shooting the messenger?)
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I think it solves nothing, cause it's not primarily a XZ issue itself, but some bad actors that infiltrate into the community for years to finally use his credibility to upload a backdoor. Every single package is vulnerable to this kind of attack and has little we can do to completely avoid it
Of course we have to make the best moves to prevent this happening again, however it's not a simple "I'll use X instead of Z" (see what I did here?!), cause both X and Z may be doomed with this shit anytime
One good thing about zstd is that the main developer is full-time employed to work on it. Alas he's employed by meta to do that... But it's likely harder to social engineer your way into that project
This is definitely a huge unsung benefit of having larger corperations get their fingers into FOSS projects. Not just the funding, which is great, but the literal job security. Good luck bullying a meta or google employee into giving over control to a stranger.
The article states reasons which aren't limited to what happened. I understand and agree with your sentiment about the supply chain issue being something that could happen anywhere - those were my initial thoughts too.
The reasons for shifting are related to speed, other mainstream software already having made that switch years ago (pre incident), and unfortunately... More robustness in terms of maintainers.
Open source funding and resilience should be mainstream discussions. Open source verification and security reliability should be mainstream discussions: here's a recent mastodon thread I found interesting:
https://ruby.social/@getajobmike/112202543680959859
However, people switching from x to z (I did see what you did there) is something that is going to happen considering the other factors listed in the article that I summarized above.