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patrick_g

Member

Registered: 2019-09-23

Posts: 13

Obfuscated code in the new Pikaur version?

I'm not very skilled and I'm kind of a noob so maybe I'm talking nonsense but I would like to ask a question here about the AUR helper named pikaur.
In github the last version is 1.22.1 but I saw a version 1.22.2 was deployed on AUR.
Also there is code in this version that looks obfuscated (shifting characters backward) :

https://github.com/actionless/pikaur/co … e0956f77e6

Is that strange to have in AUR a more recent version than in github ? And why this obfuscation ?

Whoracle

Member

Registered: 2010-11-02

Posts: 61

Re: Obfuscated code in the new Pikaur version?

The obfuscated stuff is just the original text, but obfuscated, maybe to get around some profanity filters? Bad form, IMHO, but not malicious yet.

>>> "".join([
...     chr(ord(c) - 1)
...     for c in
...     "Sfbe!ebno!bsdi.xjlj!cfgpsf!cpsljoh!zpvs!dpnqvufs;"
... ])
'Read damn arch-wiki before borking your computer:'
>>> "".join([
...     chr(ord(c) - 1)
...     for c in
...     "iuuqt;00xjlj/bsdimjovy/psh0ujumf0Bsdi`Vtfs`Sfqptjupsz"
... ])
'https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository'
>>> "".join([
...     chr(ord(c) - 1)
...     for c in
...     ")Bmtp-!epo(u!sfqpsu!boz!jttvft!up!qjlbvs-!jg!vsf!tffjoh!uijt!nfttbhf*"
... ])
"(Also, don't report any issues to pikaur, if ure seeing this message)"

And the version is bumped in the upstream repo, and a tag exists, just not a github release. So good catch, but nothing bad (yet), although one for sure wonders what the eff is going on.

OK, reading a bit more, it seems the maintainer is fed up by people not reading the wiki and using his package(?) and maybe reporting build errors here? Dunno, but the last few closed issues point to some kind of tantrum, maybe warranted, maybe not. Not using the tool, so I'm stopping here.

Last edited by Whoracle (2024-06-24 18:00:26)