What is the purpose of the file named gost.so in the filesystem root?

Waldgeist

4/26/24, 8:33 PM

What is the purpose of the file named gost.so in the filesystem root?

I found this rather by accident in the root of my file system tree:

drwxr-xr-x  19 root root       4620 Apr 26 20:51 dev
drwxr-xr-x 168 root root      12288 Apr 26 12:49 etc
**-rw-r--r--   1 root root     343464 Nov 30  2021 gost.so**
drwxr-xr-x   3 root root       4096 Apr  4 14:16 home

What legitimate purpose does a shared library serve there? I couldn't find anything about it so far.

118

2 + 1

root

muru

4/26/24, 9:06 PM

All instances of `gost.so` in [the official packages](https://packages.ubuntu.com/search?searchon=contents&mode=exactfilename&arch=any&suite=focal&keywords=gost.so) live inside `/usr/lib`. You probably just copied this file there accidentally.

Score:0

Ubuntu

ubfan1

4/26/24, 9:31 PM

$ apt-file search gost.so
libengine-gost-openssl1.1: /gost.so

Looks like a part of openssl.

+ 0

Score:-2

Ubuntu

Waldgeist

4/28/24, 11:54 AM

Thanks for helping me :) learned about apt-file and installed it right away. Now I can track suspicious files by myself in the future.

On my way to removing it I also learned that OpenSSL seems to have installed it there on purpose, for every application in need of encryption facilities to find it easily. And that's surprisingly a lot of them:

  Die folgenden Pakete werden ENTFERNT:
  apport* apport-gtk* apturl* bluez-cups* ca-certificates*
  ca-certificates-java* certbot* cups* cups-browsed* cups-core-drivers*
  cups-daemon* default-jre-headless* hplip* liblwp-protocol-https-perl*
  libnet-dbus-perl* libruby3.0* libwww-perl* libxml-parser-perl*
  libxml-sax-expat-perl* libxml-twig-perl* openjdk-11-jre-headless*
  openshot-qt* openssl* origami-pdf* pdftk* pdftk-java*
  printer-driver-gutenprint* printer-driver-hpcups* printer-driver-splix*
  python3-acme* python3-apport* python3-certbot* python3-certbot-apache*
  python3-certifi* python3-httplib2* python3-launchpadlib*
  python3-lazr.restfulclient* python3-requests* python3-requests-toolbelt*
  python3-software-properties* rake* ruby* ruby-atk* ruby-cairo*
  ruby-cairo-gobject* ruby-colorize* ruby-gdk-pixbuf2* ruby-gio2* ruby-glib2*
  ruby-gobject-introspection* ruby-gtk2* ruby-origami* ruby-pango*
  ruby-pkg-config* ruby-rubygems* ruby3.0* rubygems-integration* snapd*
  software-properties-common* software-properties-gtk* ssh-import-id*
  ssl-cert* testssl.sh* **ubuntu-mate-core* ubuntu-mate-desktop***
  ubuntu-release-upgrader-core* ubuntu-release-upgrader-gtk* update-manager*
  update-manager-core* update-notifier* update-notifier-common* x11vnc* xorg*
  xserver-xorg*

Since my laptop runs with Ubuntu Mate and my hired virtual server only runs Ubuntu, same version, this even seems to explain the difference in installations.

My conclusion: gost.so didn't get there by accident and truly serves a legitimate purpose.

Again thanks for helping me

+ 3

muru

4/28/24, 12:18 PM

This is incorrect. The `libengine-gost-openssl1.1` package that provides the `gost.so` file does not put it in `/`, you can install it in a clean system and see for yourself. Further, it's not a hard dependency of `openssl`, removing it doesn't cause `openssl` to be removed. Your system seems to be seriously broken.

ubfan1

4/28/24, 5:15 PM

@muru On an Ubuntu 22.04 clean VM, the installation of the libengine-gost-openssl1.1 package does put gost.so into the root. The package/file does not even exist in Ubuntu 23.04.

muru

4/28/24, 6:45 PM

Hmmm, that's interesting - this seems like a clear packaging bug. The package name changes in 23.04 (the 1.1 is dropped) but the package only exists for non-amd64 architectures and the file goes back to the usual location in `/usr/lib` like it was in 20.04. At any rate, it's not a hard dependency of openssl in any version of Ubuntu, and removing it doesn't affect the `openssl` package.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: What is the purpose of the file named gost.so in the filesystem root?

Post an answer

Most people don’t grasp that asking a lot of questions unlocks learning and improves interpersonal bonding. In Alison’s studies, for example, though people could accurately recall how many questions had been asked in their conversations, they didn’t intuit the link between questions and liking. Across four studies, in which participants were engaged in conversations themselves or read transcripts of others’ conversations, people tended not to realize that question asking would influence—or had influenced—the level of amity between the conversationalists.