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[–] 90 points 2 months ago (1 child)

I hope all the Arch based distros will do a proper post to inform their users on how to cleanup afterwards.

I'm hoping at least cachyos, the distro I use, will tell me exactly how to check and clean my system.

I remember that when I installed a few of my AUR package, I was well aware that this repo was pretty much unregulated and that I just have to trust it's safe. So I made sure to only use AUR as a last resort. But there was warnings on cachyos that were displayed to tell me to be cautious about it so that's at least a positive.

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  • [–] 86 points 2 months ago* (3 children)

    The article has instructions to do exactly that.

    Users who regularly install AUR packages should take the following steps immediately:

    Run pacman -Qm to list all foreign (AUR) packages installed on your system and cross-reference against the published list of compromised packages

    Audit recent PKGBUILD history for any packages installed between June 10–12, 2026

    Rotate all credentials — browser passwords, SSH keys, API tokens, and cloud access keys — if any flagged package was installed

    Scan for suspicious processes masquerading as kernel threads using tools like rkhunter or chkrootkit

    Consider using AUR helpers with PKGBUILD review prompts enabled by default.

    The Checklist of infected packages

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  • [–] 30 points 2 months ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (9 children)

    Ok, but I was expecting something a bit more automated then opening a list of package in kate and comparing it to my list of installed AUR package... Plus it's 400 package so that's a lot of things to check and plenty of space to miss one package by manually checking.

    But I get it I'm lazy and just need to script something myself. This is affecting so many people I thought we would have a script to check quickly if you are "infected".

    Edit : thanks for the numerous script sent as reply ! But I'm all set now, thanks !

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  • [–] 35 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    It took Arch ~19 years just to get archinstall.

    Something tells me there won't be a script.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    how many aur packages do you have? Most people i know have like AT MOST 20 or so packages from the aur. Which takes less then 2 mins to manually check against the list.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    I try to not use any, I have 6 and 4 of those are maintained by the developer, not some rando.

    One I really dislike is that CachyOS when you install their gaming software bundle...it uses the AUR version of Heroic Games Launcher instead of their own repo and CachyOS does not maintain the Heroic AUR AFAIK. I guess because AUR updates more frequently than their own repo? I think it's bad practice.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (2 children)

    I'm not home for a few days so I can't check yet.

    But I think I have something like 3/4 packages at the most.

    But I need to compare that to a 400+ list I'm not sure I agree with you it's that easy to do rigorously.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Not sure I understand - if you only have 3-4 packages you can just search for them specifically in the long list?

    Even if you have 50 or 100s of packages, bash makes it pretty doable

    comm -12 <(sort -u file1.txt) <(sort -u file2.txt) > common.txt
    

    Should spit out only the packages appearing in both lists (done by memory so may not be 100%)

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago

    I have much more than 20 packages in aur, most of them are dependencies from steam-native-runtime. Since steam is popular, I can understand that many have more than 20 packages.

    Now when I was reading the ArchWiki I saw that it is mentioned as an alternative, so I assume I can remove steam-native-runtime and all dependencies. Perhaps the instructions have been updated or I googled for instructions and found another page. But there could be other popular packages with many dependencies.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    It's at the bottom of the doc:

    echo "Checking for infected AUR packages (${#INFECTED_PKGS[@]} total)..."
    echo
    
    found=()
    for pkg in "${INFECTED_PKGS[@]}"; do
        if pacman -Qi "$pkg" &>/dev/null; then
            found+=("$pkg")
        fi
    done
    
    if [[ ${#found[@]} -eq 0 ]]; then
        echo "Clean: none of the known infected packages are installed."
    else
        echo "WARNING: ${#found[@]} infected package(s) found:"
        for pkg in "${found[@]}"; do
            echo "  - $pkg"
        done
    fi
    

    Not sure why it uses -Qi instead of -Qm since there's no point in scanning pacman packages, but I'm no expert

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago

    I haven't used kate but does it not have some sort of easy search?

    ex. pacman -Qm to list AUR packages; should display the 3/4 pkgs you have installed. Then just search in kate for those 3/4 results?

    Alternatively cat & grep in the terminal is pretty straight forward.

    That is if it's 3/4 pkgs that are from AUR, but if someone has hundreds installed that is a bigger issue on its own.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago* (1 child)

    Damn how long is the list when you

    pacman -Qm
    
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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    Am I missing something ?

    Just because I have 3/4 package on my system doesn't mean the 400+ list of affected package gets shorter on the other side...

    I'm actually pretty cautious with AUR and I only install them when there is no other options.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 month ago

    I was just curious because I didnt think it was so tediuous to check against an alphabetical list on a website using ctrl+f. But thats just me. It took me less than a minute to check my 8 aur packages against the list

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  • [–] 6 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Holy shit it's like all of Python.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, Python has been a massive vulnerability for a long while. And the AUR has similar issues. This is only getting widespread coverage now. But it's always been a risk.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

    Well, those are mostly extension libraries, stuff "normally" installed using pip. Arch is kind of unique that they encourage using system aur over pip, npm and other package managers. While it is a big radius, none of the python packages stick out to me, but maybe I just haven't encountered the popular ones.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    Arch usually doesn't re-package Python packages that aren't needed for something else, meaning they end up in the AUR. I maintain several there, and when I stop using them I abandon them. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the ones I used to maintain are on the list

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