cern-phone-app

maintainer vandelli · 0 votes · scanned 2026-08-03 00:08:14.047287

MEDIUM

Why flagged The PKGBUILD downloads and installs a prebuilt AppImage binary from cernphone-sw.web.cern.ch, which is a CERN-operated web hosting subdomain (web.cern.ch is CERN's standard web publishing platform). The source is plausibly official for a CERN internal application. However, the package still installs an unverified prebuilt binary executable — the sha256sum only verifies integrity against a known-good hash but does not guarantee the binary was built from auditable source. The AppImage is extracted and executed during prepare(), then installed to /opt and symlinked to /usr/bin. This is a standard AppImage packaging pattern in the AUR. The host is institutional (CERN) rather than a personal or anonymous host, which reduces but does not eliminate supply-chain risk. The medium rating is appropriate: it is a prebuilt binary from a non-standard distribution channel (not an official distro repo or well-known release platform like GitHub), even if the host is a credible institution.

Triggered rules

MEDIUM source=() URL on a non-standard host source_untrusted_domain

One or more source=() URLs point to a host outside the trusted allowlist (github.com, gitlab.com, codeberg.org, pypi.org, …).

PKGBUILD:15 source=("${_appimage_dst}::https://cernphone-sw.web.cern.ch/cernphone-sw/releases/cern-phone-app-${pkgver}-x86_64-linux.AppImage.d/${_appimage}")

MEDIUM AI review llm_review

An AI model (anthropic/claude-4.6-sonnet-20260217) reviewed this and agrees it is MEDIUM (confidence 72%): The PKGBUILD downloads and installs a prebuilt AppImage binary from cernphone-sw.web.cern.ch, which is a CERN-operated web hosting subdomain (web.cern.ch is CERN's standard web publishing platform). The source is plausibly official for a CERN internal application. However, the package still installs an unverified prebuilt binary executable — the sha256sum only verifies integrity against a known-good hash but does not guarantee the binary was built from auditable source. The AppImage is extracted and executed during prepare(), then installed to /opt and symlinked to /usr/bin. This is a standard AppImage packaging pattern in the AUR. The host is institutional (CERN) rather than a personal or anonymous host, which reduces but does not eliminate supply-chain risk. The medium rating is appropriate: it is a prebuilt binary from a non-standard distribution channel (not an official distro repo or well-known release platform like GitHub), even if the host is a credible institution.

PKGBUILD

1 offending line(s) highlighted

      1# Based off: https://daveparrish.net/posts/2019-11-16-Better-AppImage-PKGBUILD-template.html
    
      2# Maintainer: Wainer Vandelli <wainer dot vandelli at gmail dot com>
    
      3
    
      4pkgname=cern-phone-app
    
      5pkgver=1.3.3
    
      6pkgrel=1
    
      7pkgdesc="CERNPhone Desktop Application"
    
      8arch=('x86_64')
    
      9url="https://cernphone.docs.cern.ch/"
    
      10license=('custom')
    
      11depends=('zlib' 'hicolor-icon-theme')
    
      12options=(!strip)
    
      13_appimage="${pkgname}.AppImage"
    
      14_appimage_dst="${pkgname}-${pkgver}.AppImage"
    
      15source=("${_appimage_dst}::https://cernphone-sw.web.cern.ch/cernphone-sw/releases/cern-phone-app-${pkgver}-x86_64-linux.AppImage.d/${_appimage}")
    
      16noextract=("${_appimage_dst}")
    
      17sha256sums=('9165649a7a10b56b9c2f81402e806c12fe9774cca4ea0a25622131909cee1383')
    
      18
    
      19prepare() {
    
      20    chmod +x "${_appimage_dst}"
    
      21    ./"${_appimage_dst}" --appimage-extract
    
      22}
    
      23
    
      24build() {
    
      25    # Adjust .desktop so it will work outside of AppImage container
    
      26    sed -i -E "s|Exec=AppRun|Exec=env DESKTOPINTEGRATION=false /usr/bin/${pkgname}|"\
    
      27        "squashfs-root/${pkgname}.desktop"
    
      28    # Fix permissions; .AppImage permissions are 700 for all directories
    
      29    chmod -R a-x+rX squashfs-root/usr
    
      30}
    
      31
    
      32package() {
    
      33    # AppImage
    
      34    install -Dm755 "${srcdir}/${_appimage_dst}" "${pkgdir}/opt/${pkgname}/${pkgname}.AppImage"
    
      35
    
      36    # Desktop file
    
      37    install -Dm644 "${srcdir}/squashfs-root/${pkgname}.desktop"\
    
      38            "${pkgdir}/usr/share/applications/${pkgname}.desktop"
    
      39
    
      40    # Icon images
    
      41    install -dm755 "${pkgdir}/usr/share/"
    
      42    cp -a "${srcdir}/squashfs-root/usr/share/icons" "${pkgdir}/usr/share/"
    
      43
    
      44    # Symlink executable
    
      45    install -dm755 "${pkgdir}/usr/bin"
    
      46    ln -s "/opt/${pkgname}/${pkgname}.AppImage" "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/${pkgname}"
    
      47
    
      48}
    
      49

Scan history

Scanned at (UTC)	Severity	Rules
2026-08-03 00:08:14	MEDIUM	2
2026-08-02 00:16:08	MEDIUM	2
2026-08-01 00:11:18	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-31 00:14:10	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-30 00:17:23	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-29 00:25:53	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-28 00:07:28	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-27 00:24:32	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-26 00:07:32	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-25 00:13:44	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-24 00:02:28	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-23 00:14:47	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-22 00:29:32	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-21 00:24:15	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-20 00:19:49	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-19 00:17:08	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-18 00:14:48	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-17 00:06:16	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-16 00:05:41	MEDIUM	2
2026-07-15 00:09:25	MEDIUM	2