Post Syndicated from corbet original https://lwn.net/Articles/1083466/

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.