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Am in the only one who cringes at install instructions that require piping some curl output into bash? (programming.dev)

submitted 2 days ago by cschreib@programming.dev to c/linux@programming.dev

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curl https://some-url/ | sh

I see this all over the place nowadays, even in communities that, I would think, should be security conscious. How is that safe? What's stopping the downloaded script from wiping my home directory? If you use this, how can you feel comfortable?

I understand that we have the same problems with the installed application, even if it was downloaded and installed manually. But I feel the bar for making a mistake in a shell script is much lower than in whatever language the main application is written. Don't we have something better than "sh" for this? Something with less power to do harm?

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[–] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Am I the only one who cringes when I have to update my system?

How do I know the maintainers of the repo haven't gone rogue and are now distributing malware?

DAE get anxious when running code on computer?

I think for the sake of security we should just use rocks, stones, and such to destroy all computers, as this would prevent malicious software from being executed.

[–] thomask@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 day ago

I realise you're trolling but actually yes. This is why I use Debian stable where possible - if egregious malware shows up it will probably be discovered by all the folks using rolling distros first.

[–] rah@feddit.uk 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How do I know the maintainers of the repo haven't gone rogue and are now distributing malware?

Depends on the repo but at least for Debian, there's a path of trust between GPG keys I've signed and the Debian release GPG keys.

[–] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 0 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How do you know that the malware goblin hasn't installed malware on your computer when you weren't looking?

I think the only foolproof plan is using boulders, stones, and perhaps other blunt objects to deal with the issue of code executing altogether.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What are you trying to say?

[–] trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world 0 points 1 day ago

If there's code running on a machine, there's a possibility it's malicious or unsafe, the only solution is destruction of anything that can run code.