Next step, display the “potential unsafe”-badge next to verified or unverified, that can be found on the same page. In example https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.shiiion.primehack is marked as verified, but if you scroll down you can see the application has full system and data access and is marked as potential unsafe.
It makes it obvious to people whether they are downloading Google Chrome as packaged by Google or as by someone else. That being said, Google Chrome is malware. That being said there is a lot more that needs to be done to truly prevent malware, which will be costly but will hopefully take effect when they’ve got the budget for it
Because if you search Firefox and see a badge that says verified, you can be confident that it was Mozilla that packaged it and added it to FlatHub as opposed to some random scammer.
Verification doesnt help at all if the source is not trusted. All this says is “upstream developers maintain this package”. Unofficial packages can be safe too, like VLC.
It does help prevent actual malware from being downloaded, though, since upstream developers probably won’t publish malware on Flathub.
But this is still a half-measure. I don’t understand why Red Hat and Canonical don’t treat this issue seriously; people on Linux are used to assuming software installed from the repos are safe, and yet Snap and Flatpak are being pushed more and more despite their main repositories being potentially unsafe.
I can’t find it now, but I read that the verification process also includes human review (for the initial verification, not every update), so it should actually prevent “verified” malware (though it does nothing against unverified malware).
Because both Red Hat and Canonical are of the “pay us to care” mindset. If you aren’t paying for support, you’re a freeloader and need to do your own research.
That’s not entirely true with Red Hat. There’s a lot of work that they’ve done in the open source community that they haven’t shared back. And canonical seems to think this is a good idea.
Nice
Good to see one of the two big packaging hubs do something against malware
cough cough snap cough
Snap already marks unverified apps
Next step, display the “potential unsafe”-badge next to verified or unverified, that can be found on the same page. In example https://flathub.org/apps/io.github.shiiion.primehack is marked as verified, but if you scroll down you can see the application has full system and data access and is marked as potential unsafe.
How does that Help against Malware?
It makes it obvious to people whether they are downloading Google Chrome as packaged by Google or as by someone else. That being said, Google Chrome is malware. That being said there is a lot more that needs to be done to truly prevent malware, which will be costly but will hopefully take effect when they’ve got the budget for it
Because if you search Firefox and see a badge that says verified, you can be confident that it was Mozilla that packaged it and added it to FlatHub as opposed to some random scammer.
You can’t just upload a App to Flathub. Everythng is reviewed.
Apt has done this forever
Verification doesnt help at all if the source is not trusted. All this says is “upstream developers maintain this package”. Unofficial packages can be safe too, like VLC.
It does help prevent actual malware from being downloaded, though, since upstream developers probably won’t publish malware on Flathub.
But this is still a half-measure. I don’t understand why Red Hat and Canonical don’t treat this issue seriously; people on Linux are used to assuming software installed from the repos are safe, and yet Snap and Flatpak are being pushed more and more despite their main repositories being potentially unsafe.
Flathub is doing more and more, but stuff like hiding
--subset=verifiedis very bad.They simply need to gain critical mass until they can force changes like portals etc.
If you create malware and publish it on flathub, you are the upstream dev. But for sure it helps against duplicate scams.
I can’t find it now, but I read that the verification process also includes human review (for the initial verification, not every update), so it should actually prevent “verified” malware (though it does nothing against unverified malware).
Edit: Here’s an article with this and more info: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/966187/3ef48792e5e8c71d/
Fedora has their own flatpak repo built from their own rpms and their own runtime. Flathub has more flatpaks though.
Because both Red Hat and Canonical are of the “pay us to care” mindset. If you aren’t paying for support, you’re a freeloader and need to do your own research.
I mean, that’s pretty much all open source software and isn’t specific at all to RH/Canonical.
What’s provided to you is provided without warranty and you’re not automatically entitled to support, etc.
That’s not entirely true with Red Hat. There’s a lot of work that they’ve done in the open source community that they haven’t shared back. And canonical seems to think this is a good idea.
I’m not really sure what you mean by that. What do you mean they’ve done a lot of work for the open source community that they haven’t shared back?
And what does it have to do with providing software support free of charge?