I had no idea this issue had been identified. While I find this tool very useful, the project is seeming rather questionable to me now.
Hey guys open source is great you can look at all the code and therefore there are no security backdoors etc. Also here are a bunch of pre-compiled blobs in the repo, don't worry about those, but they are required to run the program.
Right, the fact that it's open is the reason this came to light, and we're having this discussion
Glad it's getting a little more light. Been trying to tell people this for a few years now lol. It's the reason I've stayed away from it since first learning of the tool and looking at the "source code".
Anyone who wants to fix this can help fix it, but people are just making demands of an unpaid maintainer. The devs can run this project the way they want to. If you don't like it, don't use Ventoy.
The people comparing this to the xz exploit are out of line. xz was a library that was deeply embedded in a lot of software. Ventoy is an IT tool used to boot live OSes. Not even remotely the same attack surface.
Blobs in the source tree are not ideal, but people need to pick their battles.
From what others have said: The blobs violate GPL because they are taken from other FOSS project but the changes Ventoy makes are not viewable.
Little did they know that Patches the Cat bit through their LAN lines and actually increased the cost of their communication.
I never trusted it because I thought it was completely proprietary. Well now I know it basically is.
Yep, some people these are saying just 7 of the 150 binaries don't have source or build info. Yeah, one binary is enough to do all the evil in the world, not that other binaries support reproducible builds anyway.
This is a bit absurd. I really don't think this is as serious as some comments say. Also there is a comment from AUR package manager which explains more details. . And even the blobs in the first post there are source and build instructions in their respective folder.
Makes me wonder how far the closest alternative, glim, could be upgraded to match Ventoy given the confines of GRUB.
Someone had mentioned that Fedora fails to verify when booting from Ventoy. Now I'm thinking if I could dd the media loaded via Ventoy and compare with an original copy to see what changed.
I like multiboot. Used it back when I used Windows.
The Ventoy advertisements on Reddit looked too suspicious, so I never checked it out.
