fawkes-bin

maintainer Chocobo1 · 5 votes · scanned 2026-08-03 00:08:14.047287
MEDIUM
View on AUR ↗
Why flagged The PKGBUILD installs a prebuilt binary ('protection') from mirror.cs.uchicago.edu, which is the University of Chicago CS department mirror — the same institution that hosts the official Fawkes project (sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu). This is not a random personal host; it is the project's own institutional mirror. The binary has a proper sha256sum (ff74e9fa...) for the architecture-specific zip, so integrity is verified. The only real concern is that the LICENSE file has 'SKIP' for its checksum, which is sloppy but not a security risk since it is pure text data. The binary itself is a prebuilt executable installed to /usr/bin, which is inherently a supply-chain trust decision, but the source is the official project host with a pinned checksum. This is a legitimate 'bin' package pattern common in the AUR. The medium rating from the cheaper model was largely a false positive based on the non-standard host, but the host is actually the official project mirror with checksum verification. Downgrading to low/clean is appropriate; the only remaining concern is the SKIP'd checksum on the LICENSE file, which is trivially low risk.

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:14 source_x86_64=("https://mirror.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/files/$pkgver/fawkes_binary_linux-v$pkgver.zip")
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 installs a prebuilt binary ('protection') from mirror.cs.uchicago.edu, which is the University of Chicago CS department mirror — the same institution that hosts the official Fawkes project (sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu). This is not a random personal host; it is the project's own institutional mirror. The binary has a proper sha256sum (ff74e9fa...) for the architecture-specific zip, so integrity is verified. The only real concern is that the LICENSE file has 'SKIP' for its checksum, which is sloppy but not a security risk since it is pure text data. The binary itself is a prebuilt executable installed to /usr/bin, which is inherently a supply-chain trust decision, but the source is the official project host with a pinned checksum. This is a legitimate 'bin' package pattern common in the AUR. The medium rating from the cheaper model was largely a false positive based on the non-standard host, but the host is actually the official project mirror with checksum verification. Downgrading to low/clean is appropriate; the only remaining concern is the SKIP'd checksum on the LICENSE file, which is trivially low risk.

PKGBUILD

1 offending line(s) highlighted
1# Maintainer: Chocobo1 <chocobo1 AT archlinux DOT net>
2
3pkgname=fawkes-bin
4pkgver=1.0
5pkgrel=3
6pkgdesc="Image cloaking tool for personal privacy"
7arch=('x86_64')
8url="https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/"
9license=('BSD')
10depends=('zlib')
11provides=("fawkes=$pkgver")
12conflicts=('fawkes')
13source=("LICENSE::https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Shawn-Shan/fawkes/master/LICENSE")
14source_x86_64=("https://mirror.cs.uchicago.edu/fawkes/files/$pkgver/fawkes_binary_linux-v$pkgver.zip")
15sha256sums=('SKIP')
16sha256sums_x86_64=('ff74e9fa671b0d3e0fe2a749d2aed9a5cb86298a2546915b5a199669fc5e88b7')
17
18
19package() {
20 cd "$srcdir"
21
22 install -Dm755 "protection" "$pkgdir/usr/bin/fawkes"
23 install -Dm644 "LICENSE" -t "$pkgdir/usr/share/licenses/fawkes"
24}
25

Scan history

Scanned at (UTC)SeverityRules
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

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