nrfutil

maintainer funnes · 2 votes · scanned 2026-08-03 00:08:14.047287

MEDIUM

Why flagged This PKGBUILD downloads and installs a prebuilt binary from Nordic Semiconductor's own file hosting infrastructure (files.nordicsemi.com), which is the official vendor distribution channel for nRF Util. The URL pattern matches Nordic's Artifactory instance used for their tooling distribution. A sha256 checksum is provided, which mitigates tampering risk in transit. However, the core concern remains: this is a prebuilt, closed-source binary being installed directly to /usr/bin with no source build, no reproducibility, and no way to audit what the binary actually does. The supply-chain risk is real — if Nordic's Artifactory instance were compromised or the binary swapped, users would be running arbitrary code. This is a genuine medium-severity concern (prebuilt binary from a vendor host with checksum but no source build), not a false positive, though it is not malicious.

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:11 source=("https://files.nordicsemi.com/ui/api/v1/download?repoKey=swtools&path=external/nrfutil/packages/nrfutil/nrfutil-${arch}-unknown-linux-gnu-${pkgver}.tar.gz")

MEDIUM AI review llm_review

An AI model (anthropic/claude-4.6-sonnet-20260217) reviewed this and agrees it is MEDIUM (confidence 78%): This PKGBUILD downloads and installs a prebuilt binary from Nordic Semiconductor's own file hosting infrastructure (files.nordicsemi.com), which is the official vendor distribution channel for nRF Util. The URL pattern matches Nordic's Artifactory instance used for their tooling distribution. A sha256 checksum is provided, which mitigates tampering risk in transit. However, the core concern remains: this is a prebuilt, closed-source binary being installed directly to /usr/bin with no source build, no reproducibility, and no way to audit what the binary actually does. The supply-chain risk is real — if Nordic's Artifactory instance were compromised or the binary swapped, users would be running arbitrary code. This is a genuine medium-severity concern (prebuilt binary from a vendor host with checksum but no source build), not a false positive, though it is not malicious.

PKGBUILD

1 offending line(s) highlighted

      1# Maintainer: funnes <johannes.neyer at gmail dot com>
    
      2
    
      3pkgname=nrfutil
    
      4pkgver=8.2.0 
    
      5pkgrel=1
    
      6pkgdesc="unified command line utility for Nordic products"
    
      7arch=("x86_64")
    
      8url="https://www.nordicsemi.com/Products/Development-tools/nRF-Util"
    
      9license=("custom")
    
      10optdepends=("jlink-software-and-documentation: for some commands (e.g. device)")
    
      11source=("https://files.nordicsemi.com/ui/api/v1/download?repoKey=swtools&path=external/nrfutil/packages/nrfutil/nrfutil-${arch}-unknown-linux-gnu-${pkgver}.tar.gz")
    
      12sha256sums=("fabe84198efe045a7cdcc9d5132669c1bc2cb168f61db93f2261ae4fd980e73f")
    
      13
    
      14package() {
    
      15  cd "${srcdir}/nrfutil-${arch}-unknown-linux-gnu-${pkgver}/data/"
    
      16  install -Dm755 bin/nrfutil "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/nrfutil"
    
      17}
    
      18

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