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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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[–] WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 12 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

It isn’t more dangerous than running a binary downloaded from them by any other means. It isn’t more dangerous than downloaded installer programs common with Windows.

TBH macOS has had the more secure idea of by default using sandboxes applications downloaded directly without any sort of installer. Linux is starting to head in that direction now with things like Flatpak.