Why a near-miss cyberattack put US officials and the tech industry on edge
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German software developer Andres Freund discovered that the latest version of the open source software program XZ Utils had been deliberately sabotaged by one of its developers, a move that could have carved out a secret door to millions of servers across the internet. Security experts say it’s only because Freund spotted the change before the latest version of XZ had been widely deployed that the world was spared a digital security crisis. The developer who introduced the backdoor, Jia Tan, is believed to be a pseudonym for an expert hacker or group of hackers working on behalf of a powerful intelligence service. The incident has raised concerns about the safety of open source software and the need to protect it. Government officials are also considering the implications of the near-miss and discussing how to protect open source code. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is urging tech companies to contribute resources back to the open source communities that build and maintain the software.

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https://www.investing.com/news/world-news/why-a-nearmiss-cyberattack-put-us-officials-and-the-tech-industry-on-edge-3367357