Serious Problems with Snap Malware in Canonical Repository

[buster]

 This is from Monday's Distrowatch:

Alan Pope, a former Ubuntu contributor and current Snap package maintainer, has raised a concern on his blog about attackers sneaking malicious Snap packages into Canonical's package repository. "There's a relentless campaign by scammers to publish malware in the Canonical Snap Store. Some gets caught by automated filters, but plenty slips through. Recently, these miscreants have changed tactics - they're now registering expired domains belonging to legitimate snap publishers, taking over their accounts, and pushing malicious updates to previously trustworthy applications. This is a significant escalation." Details on the attack are covered in Pope's blog post.

[ssfc72]

Thanks for the security heads up, on using Snap package programs. Especially Crypto wallet programs.

An excellent reading article from Alan Pope.

The scammers taking over the expired Domain name of existing older Snap programs and then placing their scamming cryto Snap program as a repacement is really nasty.

[Jason]

Disturbing! I wonder how it affects distros that use Ubuntu as a base. I remember the Mint crew forcibly removing some proprietary components from their distro years ago; I believe snap was involved. I think that Zorin uses flatpak instead of snap, which isn't proprietary. But you also have the choice of deb packages where available.