• "Half a Second" - a book on the XZ backdoor

    From LWN.net@86:200/23 to All on Sun Jul 19 06:40:08 2026
    Adrian Mastronardi has released a book called Half a Second; it is a
    detailed look into the XZ backdoor attempt
    of 2024. The book is freely available under a (non-free) noncommercial, no-derivatives CC license.

    Half a Second tells that story as one continuous narrative:
    the burned-out volunteer who maintained the code alone and was
    patiently, expertly manipulated into giving it up; the engineer
    whose half-second of curiosity caught the attack through a chain of
    luck and hard-won instinct; and the operator who built it, who has
    never been identified and, this book argues, may never be.

    https://lwn.net/Articles/1083466/
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