English

The Second Maintainer: Inside the XZ Utils Backdoor

XZ Utils is a foundational piece of compression software, embedded within millions of Linux systems across the world. For over a decade, the development of XZ Utils had fallen to just one man: Lasse Collin. Whilst he maintained it quietly in the background, burnout began to set in. The thousands of hours spent on this project were starting to catch up to him. When all hope seemed lost, a new face arrived. Jia Tan offered help, and with this, Lasse's luck began to shift... The Second Maintainer tells the true story of the XZ Utils backdoor. It exposes the social engineering performed against open-source maintainers, the supply chain attack that threatened the very backbone of the internet, and how just 500 milliseconds saved us all.

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