title: Xz: malicious code in distributed source
description: Malicious code was discovered in the upstream tarballs of xz, starting with version 5.6.0.
Through a series of complex obfuscations, the liblzma build process extracts a prebuilt object file from a disguised test file existing in the source code, which is then used to modify specific functions in the liblzma code. This results in a modified liblzma library that can be used by any software linked against this library, intercepting and modifying the data interaction with this library.
problem types: Embedded Malicious Code
affected:
{
product: xz
vendor: n/a
defaultStatus: affected
}
{
vendor: Red Hat
product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
collectionURL: https://access.redhat.com/downloads/content/package-browser/
packageName: xz
defaultStatus: unaffected
cpes: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:6
}
{
vendor: Red Hat
product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
collectionURL: https://access.redhat.com/downloads/content/package-browser/
packageName: xz
defaultStatus: unaffected
cpes: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:7
}
{
vendor: Red Hat
product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
collectionURL: https://access.redhat.com/downloads/content/package-browser/
packageName: xz
defaultStatus: unaffected
cpes: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:8
}
{
vendor: Red Hat
product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
collectionURL: https://access.redhat.com/downloads/content/package-browser/
packageName: xz
defaultStatus: unaffected
cpes: cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:9
}
{
vendor: Red Hat
product: Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8
collectionURL: https://access.redhat.com/jbossnetwork/restricted/listSoftware.html
packageName: xz
defaultStatus: unaffected
cpes: cpe:/a:redhat:jboss_enterprise_application_platform:8
}
{
product: Fedora 38
vendor: Fedora
collectionURL: https://packages.fedoraproject.org/
packageName: xz
defaultStatus: unaffected
}
{
product: Fedora 39
vendor: Fedora
collectionURL: https://packages.fedoraproject.org/
packageName: xz
defaultStatus: unaffected
}
metrics:
other: [
content: {'value': 'Critical', 'namespace': 'https://access.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/'}
type: Red Hat severity rating
]