curl https://some-url | sh

I see this all over the place nowadays, even in communities that, I would think, should be security conscious. How is that safe? What’s stopping the downloaded script from wiping my home directory? If you use this, how can you feel comfortable?

I understand that we have the same problems with the installed application, even if it was downloaded and installed manually. But I feel the bar for making a mistake in a shell script is much lower than in whatever language the main application is written. Don’t we have something better than “sh” for this? Something with less power to do harm?

  • thomask@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
    132·
    19 hours ago

    The security concerns are often overblown. The bigger problem for me is I don’t know what kind of mess it’s going to make or whether I can undo it. If it’s a .deb or even a tarball to extract in /usr/local then I know how to uninstall.

    I will still use them sometimes but for things I know and understand - e.g. rustup will put things in ~/.rustup and update the PATH in my shell profile and because I know that’s what it does I’m happy to use the automation on a new system.

        • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          You’re telling me that you dont verify the signatures of the binaries you download before running them too?!? God help you.

          I download my binaries with apt, which will refuse to install the binary if the signature doesn’t match.

        • easily3667@lemmus.orgEnglish
          1·
          4 hours ago

          By definition nothing

          The point you appear to be making is “everything is insecure so nothing is” and the point others are making is “everything is insecure so everything is”

      • thomask@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
        9·
        14 hours ago

        So tell me: if I download and run a bash script over https, or a .deb file over https and then install it, why is the former a “security nightmare” and the latter not?

        • jagged_circle@feddit.nlEnglish
          1·
          3 hours ago

          Both are a security nightmare, if you’re not verifying the signature.

          You should verify the signature of all things you download before running it. Be it a bash script or a .deb file or a .AppImage or to-be-compiled sourcecode.

          Best thing is to just use your Repo’s package manager. Apt will not run anything that isn’t properly signed by a package team members release PGP key.