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Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

sansec.io

361–370 of 387 posts

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#361
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with low rates, my first thought would probably be crypto mining via wasm. I'd never do it, but would have been less noticeable.

Or DDoS, residential proxy, product reviews... one would really think there'd be something more lucrative to sell.

maybe they did all of that too, and still had a lot of traffic/endpoints to spare/sell?

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#362
post #7

Important context given by the author of polyfill: > If your website uses http://polyfill.io , remove it IMMEDIATELY. I created the polyfill service project but I have never owned the domain name and I have had no influence over its sale. (1) Although I wonder how the GitHub account ownership was transferred. (1) https://x.com/triblondon/status/1761852117579427975

Hi, I'm the original author of the polyfill service. I did not own the domain name nor the GitHub account. In recent years I have not been actively involved in the project, and I'm dismayed by what's happened here. Sites using the original polyfill.io should remove it right away and use one of the alternatives or just drop it entirely - in the modern era it really isn't needed anymore.

People should have never started including javascript from third-party domains in the first place. It was always playing with fire and there were plenty of people pointing out the risks.

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if they have competition. Which long term is not the default state in the market.

> Which long term is not the default state in the market Why not?

Think about it for a second mate: competition leads to winners and winners don't like competition, they like monopolies.

And no, the car industry has almost no competition. It's an oligopoly with very few players and a notoriously hard industry to get in.

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#364

It's amazing to me that anyone who tried to go to a website, then was redirected to an online sports betting site instead of the site they wanted to go to, would be like "hmm, better do some sports gambling instead, and hey this looks like just the website for me". This sort of thing must work on some percentage of people, but it's disappointing how much of a rube you'd have to be to fall for it.

I'm genuinely puzzled that a group with the ability to hijack 100k+ websites can think of nothing more lucrative to do than this.

That's the parasitic equilibrium: "try to take too much - oops, now you killed yourself by becoming too much of a nuisance."

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#366

It's amazing to me that anyone who tried to go to a website, then was redirected to an online sports betting site instead of the site they wanted to go to, would be like "hmm, better do some sports gambling instead, and hey this looks like just the website for me". This sort of thing must work on some percentage of people, but it's disappointing how much of a rube you'd have to be to fall for it.

I'm genuinely puzzled that a group with the ability to hijack 100k+ websites can think of nothing more lucrative to do than this.

"ability" here meaning they bought the domain and the "GH repo"

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember Google suggesting that everyone use common libraries hosted by a shared CDN and then suggesting de-ranking slow websites and I think that’s what led to widespread adoption of this pattern. The only reason I stopped using third-party hosted libraries was because it wasn’t worth the trouble. Using subresource integrity makes it safe but it was part of the trouble.

Sure... Though while I hate to say it, I don't blame people for trusting Google's hosted copy of something. For better or worse, they are more trustworthy than some "as seen on a million janky tutorials" whatever.io. A very privacy-focused employer precluded that possibility during peak adoption, but with what many sites load up, that's the least of your worries.

No problem with Google hosting it (although I’d still use sub-resource integrity) but anyone else?

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#368
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems when proprietary resources get infected it's because hackers are the problem, but when open source resources get infected its a problem with open source. But there isn't any particular reason why a paid/proprietary host couldn't just as easily end up being taken over / sold to a party intending to inject malware. It happens all the time really.

Yes, the economic problem of reward absence is exclusive to open source and private software does not have it. They may have others, like excess of rewards to hackers in form of crypto ransom to the point that the defense department had to step in and ban payouts.

private != profitable

As long as business is not going as well as owners want, the same economic problem exists in private software too - in fact, the private companies get acquired all the time too, and they get shut down, causing DOS for many of their clients.

(See for example: https://www.tumblr.com/ourincrediblejourney )

One difference is that closed-source source usually much less efficient; I cannot imagine "100K+" customers from a commercial org with just a single developer. And when there are dozens or hundreds of people involved, it's unlikely that new owners would turn to outright criminal activity like malware; they are much more likely to just shut down.

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure... Though while I hate to say it, I don't blame people for trusting Google's hosted copy of something. For better or worse, they are more trustworthy than some "as seen on a million janky tutorials" whatever.io. A very privacy-focused employer precluded that possibility during peak adoption, but with what many sites load up, that's the least of your worries.

No problem with Google hosting it (although I’d still use sub-resource integrity) but anyone else?

Amusing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10143620

The original author probably should have done everyone a favor and just killed the site altogether.

Re: Polyfill supply chain attack hits 100K+ sites

#370

I don’t understand why JS devs treat dependencies the way they do. If you are writing scripts that run on other people’s computers I feel like the dependencies used should be vetted for security constantly, and should be used minimally. Meanwhile most libraries seem to have 80 trillion dependencies written by random github accounts called “xihonghua” or something with no other projects on their account.

Just want to point out that there's nothing wrong with having a chinese username alone
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