via

MEDIUM
maintainer sparques 3 votes scanned 2026-09-17 00:27:14.276658
View on AUR
Why flagged

This PKGBUILD downloads a prebuilt RPM binary (a VPN client) from h30326.www3.hpe.com, which is an HPE/Aruba distribution host. HPE/Aruba is the legitimate vendor of the VIA VPN client, and the maintainer's email (@hpe.com) is consistent with this. The URL includes a merchantId parameter suggesting it's an authorized distribution channel. However, the source is a prebuilt binary RPM that gets directly installed — not compiled from source — and the host is not the canonical upstream download page (which is asp.arubanetworks.com per the url= field). The sha256sum is provided but cannot be independently cross-validated against an official manifest. The package also sets SUID on via-vpn-srv (chmod o+s), which is a privilege escalation vector if the binary is compromised. This is a legitimate vendor binary VPN client distributed via a CDN/mirror host rather than the official product page, which constitutes a real supply-chain concern: if the HPE CDN host were compromised or the URL were hijacked, a malicious binary would be installed with SUID privileges. This warrants MEDIUM severity — it's not clearly malicious but represents a genuine executed-binary-from-unofficial-host 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:24 source=("https://h30326.www3.hpe.com/hpn/via-${pkgver}-rpm.x86_64.rpm?merchantId=ASP_DROPBOX")
Medium Privileged / out-of-pacman install (sudoers, setuid, or self-update) privileged_install

The package grants elevated privileges or installs an update path outside pacman: a /etc/sudoers.d rule (often passwordless), a setuid/setgid binary, or a self-update script/service that can fetch and run future code with no checksum verification. The initial install may be verified, but the ongoing privilege + update surface is a real supply-chain / privilege-escalation risk.

  • PKGBUILD:48 chmod o+s "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/via-vpn-srv"
Medium AI review llm_review

An AI model (anthropic/claude-4.6-sonnet-20260217) reviewed this and agrees it is MEDIUM (confidence 72%): This PKGBUILD downloads a prebuilt RPM binary (a VPN client) from h30326.www3.hpe.com, which is an HPE/Aruba distribution host. HPE/Aruba is the legitimate vendor of the VIA VPN client, and the maintainer's email (@hpe.com) is consistent with this. The URL includes a merchantId parameter suggesting it's an authorized distribution channel. However, the source is a prebuilt binary RPM that gets directly installed — not compiled from source — and the host is not the canonical upstream download page (which is asp.arubanetworks.com per the url= field). The sha256sum is provided but cannot be independently cross-validated against an official manifest. The package also sets SUID on via-vpn-srv (chmod o+s), which is a privilege escalation vector if the binary is compromised. This is a legitimate vendor binary VPN client distributed via a CDN/mirror host rather than the official product page, which constitutes a real supply-chain concern: if the HPE CDN host were compromised or the URL were hijacked, a malicious binary would be installed with SUID privileges. This warrants MEDIUM severity — it's not clearly malicious but represents a genuine executed-binary-from-unofficial-host risk.

PKGBUILD

2 offending line(s) highlighted
1# Maintainer: Matthew Hiles <matthew.hiles@hpe.com>
2pkgname=via
3pkgver=4.6.0.2305302
4pkgrel=1
5epoch=
6pkgdesc="Aruba Networks' Virtual Intranet Access (VIA)"
7arch=('x86_64')
8url="https://asp.arubanetworks.com/downloads;fileTypes=SOFTWARE;products=Aruba%20Virtual%20Intranet%20Access%20%28VIA%29;fileContents=Linux"
9license=('unknown') # have not been able to find this
10groups=()
11# auto generated dpends might be excessive...
12depends=(net-tools brotli bzip2 dbus double-conversion e2fsprogs freetype2 gcc-libs glib2 glibc graphite harfbuzz icu keyutils krb5 libcap libffi libgcrypt libglvnd libgpg-error libnm libpng libproxy libx11 libxau libxcb libxdmcp libxml2 lz4 md4c nspr nss openssl pcre pcre2 qt5-base systemd-libs tdb util-linux-libs xz zlib zstd)
13makedepends=()
14checkdepends=()
15optdepends=(networkmanager)
16provides=()
17conflicts=()
18replaces=()
19backup=()
20options=()
21install=
22changelog=
23options=(!strip)
24source=("https://h30326.www3.hpe.com/hpn/via-${pkgver}-rpm.x86_64.rpm?merchantId=ASP_DROPBOX")
25noextract=()
26sha256sums=('75f1a8c9ffd8ac3b62434a24188789a3135ae328ce482427df59a625e6784026')
27validpgpkeys=()
28
29prepare() {
30 cd "$srcdir"
31 ## Make work with arch's root fs layout
32 cd usr
33 mv lib64/* lib
34 rmdir lib64
35 cd ..
36 ## fix up some file conflicts with via (the QMK keyboard configurator)
37 find -name via.png -execdir mv {} anvia.png \;
38 mv usr/share/applications/via.desktop usr/share/applications/anvia.desktop
39 sed -i -e 's/Icon=via/Icon=anvia/' usr/share/applications/anvia.desktop
40}
41
42package() {
43 #cd "$pkgname-$pkgver"
44 cp -R "$srcdir/usr" "$srcdir/etc" "$pkgdir/"
45 cp -R "$srcdir/lib64/security" "$pkgdir/usr/lib/"
46 mkdir -p "$pkgdir/usr/lib/systemd/system/"
47 cp "${srcdir}/../via-vpn-srv.service" "$pkgdir/usr/lib/systemd/system/"
48 chmod o+s "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/via-vpn-srv"
49 ## autostart by default is bad :|
50 rm "${pkgdir}/etc/xdg/autostart/via-auto.desktop"
51 rmdir "${pkgdir}/etc/xdg/autostart"
52 rmdir "${pkgdir}/etc/xdg"
53 #rpmextract.sh ../$pkgname-$pkgver*.rpm*
54}
55

Scan history

Scanned at (UTC)SeverityRules
2026-09-17 00:27:14 Medium 3
2026-09-16 00:03:17 Medium 3
2026-09-15 00:25:31 Medium 3
2026-09-14 00:27:57 Medium 3
2026-09-13 00:19:54 Medium 3
2026-09-12 00:25:17 Medium 3
2026-09-11 00:19:22 Medium 3
2026-09-10 00:22:44 Medium 3
2026-09-09 00:04:09 Medium 3
2026-09-08 00:18:08 Medium 3
2026-09-07 00:30:15 Medium 3
2026-09-06 00:17:06 Medium 3
2026-09-05 00:16:27 Medium 3
2026-09-04 00:03:13 Medium 3
2026-09-03 00:15:47 Medium 3
2026-09-02 00:02:31 Medium 3
2026-09-01 00:11:19 Medium 3
2026-08-31 00:19:57 Medium 3
2026-08-30 00:04:14 Medium 3
2026-08-29 00:29:17 Medium 3

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