In Eclipse p2, installable units are able to alter the Eclipse Platform installation and the local machine via touchpoints during installation. Those touchpoints can, for example, alter the command-line used to start the application, injecting things like agent or other settings that usually require particular attention in term of security. Although p2 has built-in strategies to ensure artifacts are signed and then to help establish trust, there is no such strategy for the metadata part that does configure such touchpoints. As a result, it's possible to install a unit that will run malicious code during installation without user receiving any warning about this installation step being risky when coming from untrusted source.
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