simpletex

MEDIUM

maintainer AlenYang 0 votes scanned 2026-09-17 00:27:14.276658

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Why flagged

The PKGBUILD downloads a prebuilt Windows installer (.exe inside a .zip) from gitee.com (a Chinese code-hosting platform, not the official simpletex.cn domain), extracts it with bsdtar, then installs the contained app.asar (an Electron application archive) directly to /opt and runs it via electron13. The app.asar is executed code, not pure data — it contains the full application JavaScript/Node.js logic that runs with Electron privileges. The source host (gitee.com personal/org repo) is not the official vendor domain, meaning the file could be substituted without the upstream vendor's knowledge. There is a sha256sum check, which mitigates casual tampering but not a deliberate swap of the hosted file. The combination of: (1) executed Electron app bundle, (2) sourced from a third-party host rather than simpletex.cn, and (3) no GPG signature, constitutes a genuine supply-chain concern. This is a real medium-severity issue, not a false positive.

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:12 source=("https://gitee.com/$pkgname/simple-tex-download/releases/download/v$pkgver/SimpleTex%20Setup%20$pkgver.zip"

Medium AI review llm_review

An AI model (anthropic/claude-4.6-sonnet-20260217) reviewed this and agrees it is MEDIUM (confidence 82%): The PKGBUILD downloads a prebuilt Windows installer (.exe inside a .zip) from gitee.com (a Chinese code-hosting platform, not the official simpletex.cn domain), extracts it with bsdtar, then installs the contained app.asar (an Electron application archive) directly to /opt and runs it via electron13. The app.asar is executed code, not pure data — it contains the full application JavaScript/Node.js logic that runs with Electron privileges. The source host (gitee.com personal/org repo) is not the official vendor domain, meaning the file could be substituted without the upstream vendor's knowledge. There is a sha256sum check, which mitigates casual tampering but not a deliberate swap of the hosted file. The combination of: (1) executed Electron app bundle, (2) sourced from a third-party host rather than simpletex.cn, and (3) no GPG signature, constitutes a genuine supply-chain concern. This is a real medium-severity issue, not a false positive.

PKGBUILD

1 offending line(s) highlighted

      1# Maintainer: AronYoung <tfk6fkt at gmail dot com>
    
      2pkgname=simpletex
    
      3pkgver=0.2.5
    
      4pkgrel=1
    
      5pkgdesc="A free and convenient formula recognition software."
    
      6arch=(x86_64 aarch64)
    
      7url="https://simpletex.cn/"
    
      8license=('unknown')
    
      9depends=(electron13 bash)
    
      10makedepends=(asar imagemagick)
    
      11provides=(simpletex)
    
      12source=("https://gitee.com/$pkgname/simple-tex-download/releases/download/v$pkgver/SimpleTex%20Setup%20$pkgver.zip"
    
      13	$pkgname.desktop
    
      14)
    
      15sha256sums=('60ad5c9eb4ae3be9d8822782f2f28a9978a164f9f9698cb02490b546c7b004a0'
    
      16            '4584142e974889a9759ebdb49b7f40afb710342a7f29e0c2d742854fdb636d42')
    
      17
    
      18prepare() {
    
      19	bsdtar -xvf *.exe
    
      20	# to get simpletex.ico
    
      21	asar e resources/app.asar ./app-unpacked
    
      22}
    
      23
    
      24package() {
    
      25	find . -name "app.asar" -exec install -D {} -t "$pkgdir/opt/$pkgname/" \;
    
      26	echo -e "#!/bin/bash\nelectron13 /opt/$pkgname/app.asar" | install -Dm755 /dev/stdin $pkgdir/usr/bin/simpletex
    
      27	install -Dm 644 $pkgname.desktop -t "$pkgdir/usr/share/applications/"
    
      28	# install icon
    
      29	find . -name "$pkgname.ico" -exec convert {} "$pkgname.png" \;
    
      30	find . -name "$pkgname.png" -exec install -Dm644 {} -t "$pkgdir/usr/share/pixmaps/" \;
    
      31}
    
      32

Scan history

Scanned at (UTC)	Severity	Rules
2026-09-17 00:27:14	Medium	2
2026-09-16 00:03:17	Medium	2
2026-09-15 00:25:31	Medium	2
2026-09-14 00:27:57	Medium	2
2026-09-13 00:19:54	Medium	2
2026-09-12 00:25:17	Medium	2
2026-09-11 00:19:22	Medium	2
2026-09-10 00:22:44	Medium	2
2026-09-09 00:04:09	Medium	2
2026-09-08 00:18:08	Medium	2
2026-09-07 00:30:15	Medium	2
2026-09-06 00:17:06	Medium	2
2026-09-05 00:16:27	Medium	2
2026-09-04 00:03:13	Medium	2
2026-09-03 00:15:47	Medium	2
2026-09-02 00:02:31	Medium	2
2026-09-01 00:11:19	Medium	2
2026-08-31 00:19:57	Medium	2
2026-08-30 00:04:14	Medium	2
2026-08-29 00:29:17	Medium	2