webcatalog-bin

MEDIUM

maintainer michaelcat 2 votes scanned 2026-09-17 00:27:14.276658

View on AUR

Why flagged

The PKGBUILD downloads a prebuilt AppImage binary from cdn-2.webcatalog.io, which is WebCatalog's own CDN (a legitimate vendor CDN, not a random personal host). The package has sha256 checksums for both architectures, providing integrity verification. However, the binary is executed during prepare() via --appimage-extract to unpack it, and then installed as an executable. The CDN host is not GitHub releases or another well-known release infrastructure, but it is the vendor's own distribution channel for this commercial application. This is a standard pattern for AppImage-based AUR packages of proprietary software. The risk is real but typical for binary AUR packages: if the CDN were compromised or the maintainer updated checksums to match a malicious binary, users would execute attacker-controlled code. This is the inherent medium-level supply-chain risk of any binary-only AUR package, not an active attack. Rating remains medium due to executed prebuilt binary from a non-GitHub/non-standard CDN with no additional verification (e.g., GPG signature).

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:19 source_x86_64=("$_filename::https://cdn-2.webcatalog.io/$_pkgname/WebCatalog-$pkgver.AppImage")

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 downloads a prebuilt AppImage binary from cdn-2.webcatalog.io, which is WebCatalog's own CDN (a legitimate vendor CDN, not a random personal host). The package has sha256 checksums for both architectures, providing integrity verification. However, the binary is executed during prepare() via --appimage-extract to unpack it, and then installed as an executable. The CDN host is not GitHub releases or another well-known release infrastructure, but it is the vendor's own distribution channel for this commercial application. This is a standard pattern for AppImage-based AUR packages of proprietary software. The risk is real but typical for binary AUR packages: if the CDN were compromised or the maintainer updated checksums to match a malicious binary, users would execute attacker-controlled code. This is the inherent medium-level supply-chain risk of any binary-only AUR package, not an active attack. Rating remains medium due to executed prebuilt binary from a non-GitHub/non-standard CDN with no additional verification (e.g., GPG signature).

PKGBUILD

1 offending line(s) highlighted

      1# Maintainer: Jun-I Wu <michaelcat at aur.archlinux.org> and Jayesh Badwaik <jayesh at aur.archlinux.org>
    
      2# Contributer (previous maintainer and original submitter): Alexey Peschany <sandboiii at aur.archlinux.org>
    
      3
    
      4pkgname=webcatalog-bin
    
      5_pkgname=webcatalog
    
      6pkgver=74.0.2
    
      7pkgrel=1
    
      8pkgdesc="Turn Any Websites into Real Desktop Apps"
    
      9arch=('x86_64' 'aarch64')
    
      10url="https://webcatalog.io/webcatalog/"
    
      11options=(!strip !debug)
    
      12depends=('fuse2')
    
      13
    
      14_filename="WebCatalog-$pkgver.AppImage"
    
      15
    
      16source=("${_pkgname}.patch")
    
      17sha256sums=('8e13556f9eab7880fbc586d625147e7602d8d99cf0f23a6a130e0eb821a9a7fd')
    
      18
    
      19source_x86_64=("$_filename::https://cdn-2.webcatalog.io/$_pkgname/WebCatalog-$pkgver.AppImage")
    
      20sha256sums_x86_64=('9aa35796507fefbc5a5328208b712b5f422a1a9400f4cb3fb7431888a6e143d4')
    
      21
    
      22source_aarch64=("$_filename::https://cdn-2.webcatalog.io/$_pkgname/WebCatalog-$pkgver-arm64.AppImage")
    
      23sha256sums_aarch64=('62ca8d8d59ff669c9d81808b8f5e86eaf5fb53bed766031fadff50ef41909c46')
    
      24
    
      25prepare() {
    
      26    cd "${srcdir}"
    
      27    chmod +x ${_filename}
    
      28    ./${_filename} --appimage-extract
    
      29}
    
      30
    
      31package() {
    
      32    install -Dm755 "${srcdir}/${_filename}" "${pkgdir}/opt/appimages/${_filename}.AppImage"
    
      33    mkdir -p "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/"
    
      34    ln -s "/opt/appimages/${_filename}.AppImage" "${pkgdir}/usr/bin/${_pkgname}"
    
      35
    
      36    install -dm755 "${pkgdir}/usr/share/"
    
      37    cp -r --no-preserve=mode,ownership "${srcdir}/squashfs-root/usr/share/icons" "${pkgdir}/usr/share/"
    
      38
    
      39    mkdir "${pkgdir}/usr/share/applications/"
    
      40    cp --no-preserve=mode,ownership "${srcdir}/squashfs-root/@webcatalogdesktop.desktop" "${pkgdir}/usr/share/applications/webcatalog.desktop"
    
      41    patch -d "${pkgdir}" -p1 < "${_pkgname}.patch"
    
      42}
    
      43

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