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>EvilGnome’s functionalities include desktop screenshots, file stealing, allowing capturing audio recording from the user’s microphone and the ability to download and execute further modules. I'm glad this is still considered malware in the Linux world at least, and not just "analytics"
The more uniform linux (and linux desktop) becomes the more easier and more valuable target it becomes as well. Systemd, GNOME3, DBUS - they are essentially omnipresent on "modern" linuxes these days. The questionable safety that was provided by snowflake installs is evaporating fast.
>EvilGnome’s functionalities include desktop screenshots, file stealing, allowing capturing audio recording from the user’s microphone and the ability to download and execute further modules. I'm glad this is still considered malware in the Linux world at least, and not just "analytics"
This is considered malware in any world.
This incident made me think that the hackers planned to hijack some popular extension. this would make the more damage. My (unpopular) opinion is that GNOME should see what are the most used extensions, accept that people want those feature and bring those features into GNOME or make those official extension and not third party, so you at least control what most people would install.
Extensions work by monkey-patching and once you have a critical mass of them, you're guaranteed to run into some glitches where one monkey-patch messes up the other. I like the KDE approach more where features are actually baked into the DE. It's much easier to reproduce bugs and fix bugs that can depend on different features being enabled. Everyone benefits.
The more uniform linux (and linux desktop) becomes the more easier and more valuable target it becomes as well. Systemd, GNOME3, DBUS - they are essentially omnipresent on "modern" linuxes these days. The questionable safety that was provided by snowflake installs is evaporating fast.
So, basically, disable Gnome extensions and you're fine.
Although it could be a diversion, I wonder if the mention of Rostov (a city curiously close to Crimea) has any significance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe, but don't Ubuntu and Debian also come with GNOME as the default desktop?
They certainly do. Worth bearing in mind that this attack seems to be XOrg only and current versions of Ubuntu now default to Wayland.
This incident made me think that the hackers planned to hijack some popular extension. this would make the more damage. My (unpopular) opinion is that GNOME should see what are the most used extensions, accept that people want those feature and bring those features into GNOME or make those official extension and not third party, so you at least control what most people would install.