So I run Linux for a bit now but I am still not fully confident with downloading “random” Appimages or .tar archives (I don’t even know how to run/compile the archives but that is another problem lol) from Github or something.

I try to verify the hashes or GPG signatures for all the programs but not every developer provides a latest.yml.

I revently noticed sometimes Github shows a sha256 sum next to the files in the release tab but not in every repo and is this just a second layer or is this a substitution for the latest.yml?

Is there something I am missing or should I not worry too much when using Appimages or Flatpaks because they are sandboxed anyways?

  • anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz
    17·
    1 month ago

    Personally I’m more against the concept of downloading random Appimages from github.
    Unless you’ve personally gone through the repository code and know that it is clean and safe the hash tells you nothing of importance in that regard. It can be used to verify that the file is complete and didn’t corrupt during the download and ensures that no MITM attack went through undetected.

    Flatpaks are at least isolated and when you grab a popular package from flathub one can hope there would be an outcry if it’s unsafe. AppImages per default get full access to the user /home.

    • foggy@lemmy.world
      10·
      1 month ago

      You can’t exactly read code and determine it’s not malicious.

      This is exactly why the rise of 0 width characters being used in malware is scary: Human readable source is not 1:1 with human verifiable behavior.

      We’ve entered an arms race of “use automated tool. Review automated tools work. Used automated tool to review automated tools work. Review automated tool’s automated tool’s work…”

      I am personally not going to start reading assembly.

      • anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz
        9·
        1 month ago

        Yeah, somewhere along the line you end up with a question of trust. “Do I trust the developer of this AppImage?”, “Do I trust the result of this automated tool that checks the code for malware?” or “Do I trust my IDE and myself when I downloaded the source and tried to verify it in my sandboxed VM?”.

        My main point was that the hash doesn’t really tell you anything about the source, except whether you got an exact copy of it or not.

    • theorangeninja@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      6·
      1 month ago

      I was not aware of that. Thank you very much for pointing out! So better download a Flatpak over an Appimage if provided.

      I am currently downloading Flatpaks from Flathub as much as possible but some programs are not available on there. Or not verified and a community-maintained flatpak is just another attack surface for a MITM attack.