thesage

MEDIUM

maintainer txtsd 1 votes scanned 2026-09-17 00:27:14.276658

View on AUR

Why flagged

The package downloads a prebuilt binary (Burbridge.exe, a Linux ELF despite the .exe extension — common for Wine-free cross-platform apps) from sequencepublishing.com via a CGI download script. This is the official vendor site matching the package URL, so it is not a random personal host. However, the download mechanism (a CGI script rather than a direct versioned URL) means the file could theoretically be silently replaced without a URL change. The critical mitigating factor is that a sha256sum is pinned ('a9948c03e3c6600a1522f8b899fd97cdb56d9927bf8f8cc25b55605fcb3294dd'), which provides integrity verification regardless of the delivery mechanism — makepkg will reject any substituted binary that doesn't match. The binary is installed with 755 permissions and symlinked into /usr/bin, so it is executed directly. The opt directory is world-writable (dm777), which is a local privilege concern but not a supply-chain issue. Overall: the sha256sum pin substantially reduces the CGI-script supply-chain risk, and the host is the official vendor site. This is borderline medium/clean; the non-versioned CGI URL with a pinned hash is unusual but not clearly dangerous.

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:20 "${pkgname}-${pkgver}.zip::https://www.sequencepublishing.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi?burbridgelinux"

Medium AI review llm_review

An AI model (anthropic/claude-4.6-sonnet-20260217) reviewed this and agrees it is MEDIUM (confidence 72%): The package downloads a prebuilt binary (Burbridge.exe, a Linux ELF despite the .exe extension — common for Wine-free cross-platform apps) from sequencepublishing.com via a CGI download script. This is the official vendor site matching the package URL, so it is not a random personal host. However, the download mechanism (a CGI script rather than a direct versioned URL) means the file could theoretically be silently replaced without a URL change. The critical mitigating factor is that a sha256sum is pinned ('a9948c03e3c6600a1522f8b899fd97cdb56d9927bf8f8cc25b55605fcb3294dd'), which provides integrity verification regardless of the delivery mechanism — makepkg will reject any substituted binary that doesn't match. The binary is installed with 755 permissions and symlinked into /usr/bin, so it is executed directly. The opt directory is world-writable (dm777), which is a local privilege concern but not a supply-chain issue. Overall: the sha256sum pin substantially reduces the CGI-script supply-chain risk, and the host is the official vendor site. This is borderline medium/clean; the non-versioned CGI URL with a pinned hash is unusual but not clearly dangerous.

PKGBUILD

1 offending line(s) highlighted

      1# Maintainer: txtsd <aur.archlinux@ihavea.quest>
    
      2
    
      3pkgname=thesage
    
      4pkgver=0.40.3028
    
      5pkgrel=1
    
      6pkgdesc='English Dictionary and Thesaurus. A twenty-first century lexical reference system.'
    
      7arch=(x86_64)
    
      8url='https://www.sequencepublishing.com/1/burbridgebeta_linux.html'
    
      9license=('LicenseRef-thesage')
    
      10depends=(
    
      11  bash
    
      12  gcc-libs
    
      13  glibc
    
      14  zlib
    
      15)
    
      16makedepends=(unzip)
    
      17options=(!strip !debug)
    
      18noextract=("${pkgname}-${pkgver}.zip")
    
      19source=(
    
      20  "${pkgname}-${pkgver}.zip::https://www.sequencepublishing.com/cgi-bin/download.cgi?burbridgelinux"
    
      21  "${pkgname}.desktop"
    
      22  "${pkgname}.png"
    
      23)
    
      24sha256sums=('a9948c03e3c6600a1522f8b899fd97cdb56d9927bf8f8cc25b55605fcb3294dd'
    
      25            'f8a25d201a455c45455a3f9b8eeae5c00198752fa7dbbf247d9c17f0ea816925'
    
      26            '00d663f565810bee13d7bda68db577389e215c2424a59a828625eb05a4ecd099')
    
      27
    
      28prepare() {
    
      29  # Extract
    
      30  unzip -q "${pkgname}-${pkgver}.zip" -d "${pkgname}"
    
      31}
    
      32
    
      33package() {
    
      34  cd "${pkgname}"
    
      35
    
      36  # World writeable directory needed to write config file
    
      37  install -dm777 "${pkgdir}/opt/${pkgname}"
    
      38
    
      39  # Data and executable
    
      40  for i in $(seq -f "%04g" 0 11); do
    
      41    install -Dm644 "${i}.dat" -t "${pkgdir}/opt/${pkgname}"
    
      42  done
    
      43  install -Dm755 Burbridge.exe "${pkgdir}/opt/${pkgname}/Burbridge.exe"
    
      44
    
      45  # Images
    
      46  install -Dm644 "${srcdir}/${pkgname}.desktop" "${pkgdir}/usr/share/applications/${pkgname}.desktop"
    
      47  install -Dm644 "${srcdir}/${pkgname}.png" "${pkgdir}/usr/share/pixmaps/${pkgname}.png"
    
      48
    
      49  # Symlink to binary
    
      50  install -dm755 "${pkgdir}/usr/bin"
    
      51  ln -s "/opt/${pkgname}/Burbridge.exe" "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/thesage"
    
      52}
    
      53

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