I found this Veratasium documentary on the xz Jia Tan backdoor adventure quite good and surprisingly detailed:
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Shame about the #clickbait title, but I guess Veritasium wants that money and that's fine.
@bagder I had up to now never seen the colour mixing analogy, quite like that.
Also, does this count as a rickroll?
@bagder I learned more than I would care to admit about how encryption works. And the RedHat admin was admirably candid about his role.
@bagder I actually spent some time talking through the technical details of the backdoor with the writers of that video, since they came across my talk about it just after it was discovered.
I definitely think the video is a bit dramatic and geared towards a less technical (or at least less cyber-focused) audience, but was impressed with how much they cared about getting the minutiae right. Realistically, most of their viewers won’t care about ifunc or dynamic linker audit hooks, but it does keep things interesting for the cyber folks watching.
@FarmerDenzel yeah, I would probably even argue that they made it a little *too* detailed at the risk of getting people bored for a show geared towards "common people"
@bagder still gives me the shivers ....
@jimfuller yeah! it's a good reminder to walk through the steps we have to make us not become part of a future similar documentary...
@bagder I might have a new simulation for curl up this year ;)