Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

You lost your ballpoint pen, Slack? Why's your Linux version unsigned?

No digital signature on hipster collab app means it's easy to make dangerous fakes

Slack is distributing versions of its chatroom app for Linux machines that are not digitally signed, contrary to industry best practice.

The absence of a digital signature creates a means for miscreants to sling around doctored versions of the software that users wouldn't easily be able to distinguish from the real thing.

El Reg learned of the issue from reader Trevor Hemsley, who reported the problem to Slack back in August and only notified the media after a promised fix failed to appear.

"Slack distribute Linux packages for their app and those packages come from a yum repository that does not have a GPG key and the packages are not signed," Hemsley explained.

"This means that anyone who has installed Slack on an RPM-based Linux system has effectively given root access to packages that contain unknown and unverified content. If Slack were to get owned in the same way as MeDoc in the Ukraine, all Slack users would just pull down hacked packages and merrily install them on the system, giving instant root access."

Slack is whack

Standard practice is for software packages to be signed with a key, and for people to trust only packages signed by either the distro team or someone they trust.

GPG signing RPMs on RedHat/CentOS/Fedora, etc, is recommended. The Slack RPM is not signed. El Reg approached Slack's PR team for comment and was told: "Slack takes security very seriously and we're constantly looking for ways to improve. This is something we're indeed working on. It's been on our roadmap for quite some time and is coming very soon." ®

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like