Radicle: Open-Source, Peer-to-Peer, GitHub Alternative

Andrew@andrew.masto.host to Open Source@lemmy.ml – 133 points –

Radicle: Open-Source, Peer-to-Peer, GitHub Alternative
https://radicle.xyz/
@opensource

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This doesn't pass the smell test.

  • Instructs to pipe the output of curl in sh
  • Assumes that sh is bash [^1]
  • "Community" behind it is apparently originating in Berlin, and is now a "nonprofit foundation in Switzerland", but has no publicly disclosed legal structure anymore.
  • "Community" behind it uses discord, but not revolt, matrix, simplex or others.
  • "Community" behind it uses twitter, but not mastodon.
  • Cryptobros.

[^1]: sh <(curl -sSf https://url.redacted/script)

Installing by piping from curl is pretty common and not a red flag in and of itself. Even Rust is installed this way. If you don't trust the URL, you also shouldn't trust any binary installers downloaded from that website.

Installing by piping from curl is

Toxic. Speaking as someone who was security chief at an OS, what you meant to say was 'toxic'.

Given its insidious nature, though, 'venomous' may be a good alternate.

Rust is a red flag

Why?

Crates is insecure and, as pointed out above, so is piping curl to bash for installing rust Dev tools

Crates is insecure

And? You are literally installing someone else's code. The compiler isn't an AV. This is true for all langs.

piping curl to bash for installing rust Dev tools

How is it any different than installing binaries from the site and just pulling the binary via curl? The bash script is also visible to anyone, feel free to check it for anything that might be malicious.

@Asudox @delirious_owl

There are many much safer ways of installing someone else's code than curl|bash. It doesn't even verify any signatures...

Trust is a thing. We should trust the person writing our dependencies and be able to verify that it was published by them, and not somebody in the middle maliciously altering the code.

You should not be installing unsigned binaries from a website. Either use a package manager that checks for signatures or manually check the signatures yourself. If the project doesn't sign their releases, open a bug report.

Can you elaborate?

I was under the impression that there was some kind of consensus around rust being one of the safest languages to use. However, I've seen comments about rust being bad pop up in a few threads lately but they never explain why they think so.

You're talking about using the language and preventing errors. That's less about security and more about preventing errors.

I'm talking about the supply chain, watering hole attacks, etc. Crates does not cryptographically verify the authenticity or anything that it downloads.

The only language that I'm aware of that has a dependency manager that has cryptographic auth of everything it downloads is Java's Maven. Everything else is vulnerable, rust included.