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Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

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Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#121

Post by hvb2 »

3036e4 wrote: post #114
hvb2 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that realistic though? What you're proposing is letting go of abstractions completely. Say you need compression, you're going to review changes in the compression code? What about encryption, a networking library, what about the language you're using itself? That means you need to be an expert on everything you run. Which means no one will be building anything non trivial.

Small, trivial, things, each solving a very specific problem, and that can be fully understood, sounds pretty amazing though. Much better than what we have now.

That's what a package is supposed to solve, no?

Sure there are packages trying to solve 'the world' and as a result come with a whole lot of dependencies, but isn't that on whoever installs it to check?

My point was that git clone of the source can't be the solution, or you own all the code... And you can't. You always depend on something....

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#122

Post by echelon »

antiloper wrote: post #33
echelon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It's a whole new attack vector. This should be a SEV0 at Google and Anthropic and they need to be all-hands in monitoring this and communicating this to the public. Their communications should be immediate and fully transparent.

It's not a SEV0 for LLM providers. If you already have code execution on some system, you've lost already, and whatever process the malware happens to start next is not at fault.

It 100% is, and I posted my rationale here [1]. I would stake my reputation on this being the appropriate stance.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45039442

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#123

Post by bethekidyouwant »

algo_lover wrote: post #14
divan wrote: post #6

So any process on my computer could just start using Claude Code for their own purposes or what? o_O

Any postinstall script can add anything to your bashrc. I sometimes wonder how the modern world hasn't fallen apart yet.

realistically, how many times has this happened in eg homebrew? Hard to be worried tbh.

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#124

Post by 0x3f »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #111
OJFord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be a deliberate 'attack', Claude can just do something absurdly inappropriate that wasn't what you intended. You're absolutely right! I should not have `rm -rf /bin`d!

I don’t use Claude, but can it really run commands on the cli without human confirmation? Sure there may be a switch to allow this but If in that case all but the most yolo must be using it in a container?

By default it asks before running commands. The options when it asks are something like

[1] Yes

[2] Yes, and allow this specific command for the rest of this session

[3] No

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#125

Post by inbx0 »

Periodic reminder to disable npm install scripts.

    npm config set ignore-scripts true [--global]
It's easy to do both at project level and globally, and these days there are quite few legit packages that don't work without them. For those that don't, you can create a separate installation script to your project that cds into that folder and runs their install-script.

I know this isn't a silver bullet solution to supply chain attakcs, but, so far it has been effective against many attacks through npm.

https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v8/commands/npm-config

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#126

Post by spankalee »

terminalbraid wrote: post #48
vorgol wrote: post #20

OSs need to stop letting applications have a free reign of all the files on the file system by default. Some apps come with apparmor/selinux profiles and firejail is also a solution. But the UX needs to change.

Which operating system lets an application have "free reign of all the files on the file system by default"? Neither Linux, nor any BSD, nor MacOS, nor Windows does. For any of those I'd have to do something deliberately unsafe such as running it as a privileged account (which is not the "default").

The multi-user security paradigm of Unix just isn't enough anymore in today's single-user, running untrusted apps world.

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#127

Post by echelon »

CER10TY wrote: post #36
fooqux wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hopefully the LLM vendors issue security statements shortly. If they don't, that'll be pretty damning. Why would it be damning? Their products are no more culpable than Git or the filesystem. It's a piece of software installed on the computer whose job is to do what it's told to do. I wouldn't expect it to know that this particular prompt is malicious.

Personally, I'd expect Claude Code not to have such far-reaching access across my filesystem if it only asks me for permission to work and run things within a given project.

This confusion is even more call for a response from these companies.

I don't understand why HN is trying to laugh at this security and simultaneously flag the call for action. This is counterproductive.

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#128

Post by mr_mitm »

bethekidyouwant wrote: post #111
OJFord wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't have to be a deliberate 'attack', Claude can just do something absurdly inappropriate that wasn't what you intended. You're absolutely right! I should not have `rm -rf /bin`d!

I don’t use Claude, but can it really run commands on the cli without human confirmation? Sure there may be a switch to allow this but If in that case all but the most yolo must be using it in a container?

There are scenarios in which you allow it to run python or uv for the session (perhaps because you want it to run tests on its own), and then for whatever reason it could run `subprocess.run("rm -rf / --no-preserve-root".split())` or something like that.

I use it in a container, so at worst it can delete my repository.

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#129

Post by [deleted] »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #64

Before anyone puts the blame on Nx, or Anthropic, I would like to remind you all what actually caused this exploit. The exploit was caused by an exploit, shipped in a package, that was uploaded using a stolen "token" (a string of characters used as a sort of "usename+password" to access a programming-language package-manager repository). But that's just the delivery mechanism of the attack. What caused the attack to…

[deleted]

Re: Malicious versions of Nx and some supporting plugins were published

#130

Post by SoftTalker »

terminalbraid wrote: post #48
vorgol wrote: post #20

OSs need to stop letting applications have a free reign of all the files on the file system by default. Some apps come with apparmor/selinux profiles and firejail is also a solution. But the UX needs to change.

Which operating system lets an application have "free reign of all the files on the file system by default"? Neither Linux, nor any BSD, nor MacOS, nor Windows does. For any of those I'd have to do something deliberately unsafe such as running it as a privileged account (which is not the "default").

How many software installation instructions require "sudo"? It seems to me that it's many more than should be necessary. And then the installer can do anything.

As an administrator, I'm constantly being asked by developers for sudo permission so they can "install dependencies" and my first answer is "install it in your home directory" sure it's a bit more complexity to set up your PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH but you're earning a six-figure salary, figure it out.

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