The main issue is the handling of security updates within the Nixpkgs ecosystem, which relies on Nix’s CI system, Hydra, to test and build packages. Due to the extensive number of packages in the Nixpkgs repository, the process can be slow, causing delays in the release of updates. As an example, the updated xz 5.4.6 package took nearly 5 days to become available in the unstable branch!
Fundamentally, there needs to be a change in how security fixes are handled in Hydra. As stated in the article, Nix was lucky to be unaffected, but multiple days to push out a security patch of this severity is concerning, even if there was no reason for concern.
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First of all, I’m not the author of the article, so you’re barking up the wrong tree.
That doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things - it doesn’t solve the fundamental issue of slow security updates.
Do you seriously expect people to do that every time there’s a security update? Especially considering how large the ecosystem is? And what if someone wasn’t aware of the issue, do you really expect people to be across every single vulnerability across the hundreds or thousands of OSS projects that may be tied to the packages you’ve got on your machine?
The rest of your points also assume that the older packages don’t have a vulnerability. The point of this post isn’t really about the xz backdoor, but to highlight the issue of slow security updates.
Citation needed. I’ve never seen the Nix developers state that in any official capacity.
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