I run npm under bubblewrap because npm has a culture of high risk; of using too many dependencies from untrusted authors. But being scrupulous and responsible is a cost I pay with my time and attention. But it is important because if I run some untrusted code and am compromised it can affect others.
But that is challenging when every time some exploit rolls around people, like you, brush it off as "unlucky". As if to say it's inavoidable. That nobody can be expected to be responsible for the libraries they use because that is too hard or whatever. You simply lack the appetite for good hygene and it makes it harder for the minority of us who care about how our actions affect others.
For what it's worth, there are some advancements. PNPM - the packager used in this case - doesn't automatically run postinstall scripts. In this case, either the engineer allowed it explicitly, or a transitive dependency was previously considered safe, and allowed by default, but stopped being safe.
PNPM also lets you specify a minimum package age, so you cannot install packages younger than X. The combination of these would stop most attacks, but becomes less effective if everyone specifies a minimum package age, so no one would fall victim.
It's a bit grotesque because the system relies on either the package author noticing on time, or someone falling victim and reporting it.
NPM now supports publishing signed packages, and PNPM has a trustPolicy flag. This is a step in a good direction, but is still not enough, because it relies on publishers to know and care about signing packages, and it relies on consumers to require it.
There _is_ appetite for a better security model, but a lot of old, ubiquitous packages, are unmaintained and won't adopt it. The ecosystem is evolving, but very slowly, and breaking changes seem needed.
So a slight amendment there on the human error side of things.
If you find a better solution than being responsible for what you do and who you trust, I'm all for it. Until then, that's part of the job.
When I was a junior, our company payed a commercial license for some of the larger libraries we used and it included support. Or manage risk by using fewer and more trustworthy projects like Django instead of reaching for a new dependency from some random person every time you need to solve a simple problem.
> What no appetite? I just don't like your solution.
When I say "appetite" I am being very deliberate. You are hungry but you won't eat your vegetables. When you say "I just don't like your vegetables", then you aren't that hungry. You don't have the appetite. You'd rather accept the risk. Which is fine but then don't complain when stuff like this happens and everyone is compromised.
npm has had a bad ecosystem since its inception. The left-pad thing being some of my earliest memories of it [1]. So none of this is new.
But all of this is still an issue because it's too convenient and that's the most important thing. Even cargo copies npm because they want to be seen as convenient and the risk is acknowledged. Nobody has the appetite to be held accountable for who they put their trust in.
> snickerbockers > No, your security failure is that you use a package manager
> you > It isn't victim blaming. People like you make it impossible to avoid attacks like these because you have no appetite for a better security model.
Under those conditions, people are not in fact making choices. These are not people "that have no appetite for a better security model". These are people who don't even know they are unsafe!
Yes, this is victim blaming. Just in the same way people blame a rape victim for what they wear. Does what you wear modify the situation? Yes. Does it cause the situation? No. We only really blame a victim if they are putting themselves directly, and knowingly, in harms way. This is not that case! This is a case where people are uninformed, both in the dangers present as well as the existence of danger.
FFS, on more than one occasion I've installed a package only to see that it bundles `npm` along with it. And I'm more diligent than most people, so I know tons of people don't know it's happening. Especially because you can't always run `which npm` to find if it is installed. But the fact is that you can do something like `brew install foo` and foo has a dependency that has a dependency that has node as a dependency.
Dependency hell is integral to the problem here! So you can go ahead and choose a package manager that doesn't allow 3rd parties to push arbitrary code and end up with a package manager that allows 3rd parties to push arbitrary code! That's even what made left-pad a thing (and don't get me started on the absurdity of using a module for this functionality!).
> Nobody has the appetite to be held accountable for who they put their trust in
So stop this bullshit rhetoric of "know what you're running" because it is ignoring the reality of the situation. Yes, people should do due diligence and inspect, but the reality is that this is not possible to do. Nor is it bulletproof, as it requires the reader to be omniscient themselves, or at least a security expert with years of training to even be able to spot security mistakes. Hell, if everyone (or just programmers) already had that kind of training then I'd wager 90+% of issues wouldn't even exist in the code in the first place.
So stop oversimplifying the situation because we can't even begin to talk about what needs to be done to solve things if we can't even discuss the reality of the problem.
> I'd wager a large portion of people with `npm` don't actually realize they have `npm`.
Recklessness is not a defense.
> But the fact is that you can do something like `brew install foo` and foo has a dependency that has a dependency that has node as a dependency.
That's good to know. I've never looked at brew and wasn't planing on using it, but I will stay away from it in the future. It sounds like you learned your lesson though, right?
Because if you haven't, that sounds like negligence. You can't be unaccountable for your actions by admitting that you did not expect those outcomes when you did not do your due diligence. And if you don't hold yourself accountable, then you sure aren't about to hold others accountable either. So your whole ecosystem is screwed.
> Yes, this is victim blaming. Just in the same way people blame a rape victim for what they wear.
Not even remotely. I can say and it's bad for people to abuse exploits and they don't deserve that. At the same time, if I put my private key without a passphrase into the public, or commit secrets to git and share them with the public, I am being negligent.
You are leaving your car unlocked with the windows rolled down in a dodgy part of town overnight. And when it's gone/pilfered in the morning, it's completely fair to say that you did a stupid thing.
We can say that is negligent without saying that you deserved it or that it ought to have happened. And it's absolutely okay for me, or anybody else, to say that you should have known better, without you comparing me to a rape apologist.
> In the real world nobody can read all the lines of code. There's just too many lines of code!
I don't know why you went on that rant when you quoted me talking about "trust". I wouldn't need trust if I could fully understand everything about every machine I use and only rely on myself.
> So stop this bullshit rhetoric of "know what you're running" because it is ignoring the reality of the situation.
Naw, it isn't. I trust packages from my operating system's package manager. The issues we see with left-pad and shai-hulud, have never and will never happen to me using those packages because they simply do not accept the kinds of garbage people put up on npm, or brew apparently as you pointed out.
I avoid running stuff like on-my-zsh because I don't have the patience to audit that and I certainly don't want to run untrusted stuff in my shell as root. But it's a very popular package because people, like you, have a greater risk tolerance. And that's fine, as long as you accept the consequences of that risk tolerance. You aren't paying for support or liability, you aren't reading the code, you are putting trust in random sources and hoping that things work out.
If you want the luxury running untrusted code as root, or the luxury of leaving your car open in a dodgy part of town overnight, then maybe maybe what you want is a surveillance state, idk. There is a cost to that. A tradeoff. If that's what you want and that's your goal, then I can't stop you. But it's you could also just ... not do such risky things.
But like, isn't that actually the core of the problem? People choose to blindly trust some random 3rd parties - isn't exploiting this trust seems to be inevitable and predictable outcome?
Victim-blaming is when a girl gets raped and you tell her that it's her fault for dressing like a skank and getting drunk at a college fraternity party. Telling the bank they should have put the money in a vault instead of leaving it in an unlocked drawer next to the cash register is not victim-blaming. Telling the CIA that they shouldn't have given Osama Bin-Laden guns and money to fight the soviets in afghanistan is not victim-blaming. Telling president Roosevelt it was a poor decision to park the entire Pacific fleet in a poorly-defended naval base adjacent to an expansionist empire which is already at war with most of America's allies is not victim-blaming. *Telling a well-funded corporation to not download and execute third-party code with privileges is not victim blaming, especially as their customers are often the ones who are actually being targeted.*
>I bet the commenter also has installed pip or npm packages without reading its full code
I think i did use pip at some point about a decade ago but i can't remember what for. In general though you lose that bet because I don't use either of these programs.
> it just feels cool to tell other people they are dumb
it does, yes.
>and it's their own fault for not reading all the code beforehand or for using a package manager, when every single person does the same.
I don't suppose you've ever played an old video game called "Lemmings"?
>Some just are unlucky.
Lol.
>The whole ecosystem is broken, the expectations of trust are not compatible with the current amount of attacks.
that's kind of my point, except it doesn't mitigate responsibility for participating in that ecosystem.
Everyone works with these package managers, I bet the commenter also has installed pip or npm packages without reading its full code, it just feels cool to tell other people they are dumb and it's their own fault for not reading all the code beforehand or for using a package manager, when every single person does the same. Some just are unlucky.
The whole ecosystem is broken, the expectations of trust are not compatible with the current amount of attacks.