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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 3 months 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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[–] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 5 points 3 months ago (24 children)

Damn that's bad misinformation. Its a security nightmare

[–] thomask@lemmy.sdf.org 11 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

So tell me: if I download and run a bash script over https, or a .deb file over https and then install it, why is the former a "security nightmare" and the latter not?

[–] rocky_patriot@programming.dev 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

For example: A compromised host could detect whether you are downloading the script or piping it.

[–] thomask@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 3 months ago

I'm confident that if the host is compromised I'm screwed regardless.

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