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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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[–] serenissi@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Unpopular opinion, these are handy for quickly installing in a new vm or container (usually throwaway) where one don't have to think much unless the script breaks. People don't install thing on host or production multiple times, so anything installed there is usually vetted and most of the times from trusted sources like distro repos.

For normal threat model, it is not much different from downloading compiled binary from somewhere other than well trusted repos. Windows software ecosystem is famously infamous for exactly the same but it sticks around still.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah and windows is famous for botnets lol.

[–] Aux@feddit.uk 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yet most botnets are Linux based.

[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

In not talking about the CAC. I'm talking about the members of the botnet.

Or are you hinting at Linux based IoT devices?

[–] Aux@feddit.uk 2 points 18 hours ago

IoT devices, web servers, etc.