Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

stepsecurity.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 317 posts

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#41

Post by harrisi »

It's always been shocking to me that the way people run CI/CD is just listing a random repository on GitHub. I know they're auditable and you pin versions, but it's crazy to me that the recommended way to ssh to a server is to just give a random package from a random GitHub user your ssh keys, for example.

This is especially problematic with the rise of LLMs, I think. It's the kind of common task which is annoying enough, unique enough, and important enough that I'm sure there are a ton of GitHub actions that are generated from "I need to build and deploy this project from GitHub actions to production". I know, and do, know to manually run important things in actions related to ssh, keys, etc., but not everyone does.

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#42

Post by Terr_ »

mh- wrote: post #10
mubou wrote: post #6

In recent years, it's started to feel like you can't trust third-party dependencies and extensions at all anymore. I no longer install npm packages that have more than a few transitive dependencies, and I've started to refrain from installing vscode or chrome extensions altogether. Time and time again, they either get hijacked and malicious code added, or the dev themselves suddenly decides to betray everyone's trust…

> eslint's dependency tree And if you turn on devDependencies (top right), it goes from 85 to 1263.

I'd also emphasize out that there's nothing safe about it being "only dev", given how many attacks use employee computers (non-prod) as a springboard elsewhere.

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#43

Post by kubectl_h »

mubou wrote: post #6

In recent years, it's started to feel like you can't trust third-party dependencies and extensions at all anymore. I no longer install npm packages that have more than a few transitive dependencies, and I've started to refrain from installing vscode or chrome extensions altogether. Time and time again, they either get hijacked and malicious code added, or the dev themselves suddenly decides to betray everyone's trust…

npm supply chain attacks are the lone thing that keeps me up at night, so to speak. I shudder thinking about the attack surface.

I go out of my way to advocate for removing dependencies and pushing against small dependency introductions in a large ruby codebase. Some dependencies that suck and impose all sorts of costs, from funky ass idiosyncratic behavior or absurd file sizes (looking at you any google produced ruby library, especially the protocol buffer dependent libraries) are unavoidable, but I try to keep fellow engineers honest about introducing libraries that do things like determine the underlying os or whatever and push towards them just figuring that out themselves or, at the least, taking "inspiration" from the code in those libraries and reproducing behavior.

A nice side effect of AI agents and copilots is they can sometimes write "organic" code that does the same thing as third party libraries. Whether that's ethical, I don't know, but it works for me.

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#44

Post by sestep »

harrisi wrote: post #41

It's always been shocking to me that the way people run CI/CD is just listing a random repository on GitHub. I know they're auditable and you pin versions, but it's crazy to me that the recommended way to ssh to a server is to just give a random package from a random GitHub user your ssh keys, for example. This is especially problematic with the rise of LLMs, I think. It's the kind of common task which is annoying en…

The crazier part is, people typically don't even pin versions! It's possible to list a commit hash, but usually people just use a tag or branch name, and those can easily be changed (and often are, e.g. `v3` being updated from `v3.5.1` to `v3.5.2`).

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#45

Post by naikrovek »

I’ve been saying for a while that there aren’t supply chain problems when the supply chain is the problem.

I’m getting to the point where I feel that library use at all should be frowned upon, unless it is your own library, with obvious exceptions for the most widely used things like encryption and authentication. None of these things are particularly difficult, people just don’t want to do them “oh noes my velocity”

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#46

Post by CamJN »

ashishb wrote: post #39
mubou wrote: post #6

In recent years, it's started to feel like you can't trust third-party dependencies and extensions at all anymore. I no longer install npm packages that have more than a few transitive dependencies, and I've started to refrain from installing vscode or chrome extensions altogether. Time and time again, they either get hijacked and malicious code added, or the dev themselves suddenly decides to betray everyone's trust…

> Can you really say you trust all of these? We need better capabilities. E.g. when I run `fd`, `rg` or similar such tool, why should it have Internet access? IMHO, just eliminating Internet access for all tools (e.g. in a power mode), might fix this. The second problem is that we have merged CI and CD. The production/release tokens should ideally not be on the same system as the ones doing regular CI. More users nee…

You also need to block write access, so they can’t encrypt all your files with an embedded public key. And read access so they can’t use a timing side channel to read a sensitive file and pass that info to another process with internet privileges to report the secret info back to the bad guy. You get the picture, I’m sure.

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#47

Post by londons_explore »

> await exec.getExecOutput('bash', ['-c', `echo "aWYgW1sgIiRPU1RZUEUiID09ICJsaW51eC1nbnUiIF1dOyB0aGVuCiAgQjY0X0JMT

This malicious code isn't hard to recognise... Surely someone can run an LLM over all code in GitHub and just ask it 'does this code looks like it's blatantly trying to hide some malicious functionality'?

Then review the output and you'll probably discover far more cases of this sort of thing.

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#48

Post by Terr_ »

cmckn wrote: post #35
dan_manges wrote: post #7

GitHub Actions should use a lockfile for dependencies. Without it, compromised Actions propagate instantly. While it'd still be an issue even with locking, it would slow down the rollout and reduce the impact. Semver notation rather than branches or tags is a great solution to this problem. Specify the version that want, let the package manager resolve it, and then periodically update all of your packages. It would a…

I always use commit hashes for action versions. Dependabot handles it, it’s a no brainer.

> commit hashes

There is some latent concern that most git installations use SHA-1 hashes, as opposed to SHA-256. [0]

Also the trick of creating a branch that happens to be named the same as a revision, which then takes precedence for certain commands.

[0] https://git-scm.com/docs/hash-function-transition

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#49

Post by sieabahlpark »

harrisi wrote: post #41

It's always been shocking to me that the way people run CI/CD is just listing a random repository on GitHub. I know they're auditable and you pin versions, but it's crazy to me that the recommended way to ssh to a server is to just give a random package from a random GitHub user your ssh keys, for example. This is especially problematic with the rise of LLMs, I think. It's the kind of common task which is annoying en…

[dead]

Re: Tj-actions/changed-files GitHub Action Compromised – used by over 23K repos

#50

Post by remram »

harrisi wrote: post #41

It's always been shocking to me that the way people run CI/CD is just listing a random repository on GitHub. I know they're auditable and you pin versions, but it's crazy to me that the recommended way to ssh to a server is to just give a random package from a random GitHub user your ssh keys, for example. This is especially problematic with the rise of LLMs, I think. It's the kind of common task which is annoying en…

People don't pin versions. Referencing a tag is not pinning a version, those can be updated, and they are even with the official actions from GitHub.
Post reply on HN