My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack • Hacker News Board

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#31

Post by dmitrygr » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:06 PM UTC

ddp26 wrote: post #13

dmitrygr wrote: post #8

Consider this your call to write native software. There is yet to be a supply chain attack on libc

Sure, but this is a pretty onerous restriction. Do you think supply chain attacks will just get worse? I'm thinking that defensive measures will get better rapidly (especially after this hack)

> Do you think supply chain attacks will just get worse? I'm thinking that defensive measures will get better rapidly (especially after this hack)

I think the attacks will get worse and more frequent -- ML tools enable doing it easily among people who were previously not competent enough to pull it off but now can. There is no stomach for the proper defensive measures among the community for either python or javascript. Why am i so sure? This is not the first, second, third, or fourth time this has happened. Nothing changed.

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#32

Post by ting0 » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:08 PM UTC

cedws wrote: post #5

GitHub, npm, PyPi, and other package registries should consider exposing a firehose to allow people to do realtime security analysis of events. There are definitely scanners that would have caught this attack immediately, they just need a way to be informed of updates.

I feel like they should be legally responsible for providing scanning infrastructure for this sort of thing. The potential economic damage can be catastrophic. I don't think this is the end of the litellm story either, given that 47k+ people were infected.

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#33

Post by ting0 » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

ddp26 wrote: post #13

dmitrygr wrote: post #8

Consider this your call to write native software. There is yet to be a supply chain attack on libc

Sure, but this is a pretty onerous restriction. Do you think supply chain attacks will just get worse? I'm thinking that defensive measures will get better rapidly (especially after this hack)

They will certainly get worse. LLMs make it so much easier.

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#34

Post by hrmtst93837 » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #8

Consider this your call to write native software. There is yet to be a supply chain attack on libc

[flagged]

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#35

Post by consp » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

everforward wrote: post #29

woodruffw wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is presumably because libc just doesn't change very often (not meaning code changes, but release cadence). But the average native software stack does have lots of things that change relatively often[1]. So "native" vs. not is probably not a salient factor. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

I think that article proves the opposite. > While xz is commonly present in most Linux distributions, at the time of discovery the backdoored version had not yet been widely deployed to production systems, but was present in development versions of major distributions. Ie if you weren’t running dev distros in prod, you probably weren’t exposed. Honestly a lot of packaging is coming back around to “maybe we shouldn’t…

This is the security equivalent of having a better lock than your neighbour. Won't save you in the end but you won't be first. Then again, yours could also be broken and you don't get to tick of that audit checkbox.

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#36

Post by applfanboysbgon » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

dmitrygr wrote: post #31

ddp26 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but this is a pretty onerous restriction. Do you think supply chain attacks will just get worse? I'm thinking that defensive measures will get better rapidly (especially after this hack)

> Do you think supply chain attacks will just get worse? I'm thinking that defensive measures will get better rapidly (especially after this hack) I think the attacks will get worse and more frequent -- ML tools enable doing it easily among people who were previously not competent enough to pull it off but now can. There is no stomach for the proper defensive measures among the community for either python or javascri…

Not only do the tools enable incompetent attackers, they also enable a new class of incompetent library developers to create and publish packages, and a new class of incompetent application developers to install packages without even knowing what packages are being used in the code they aren't reading, and a new class of incompetent users who are allowing OpenClaw to run completely arbitrary code on their machines with no oversight. We are seeing only the tip of the iceberg of the security breaches that are to come.

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#37

Post by dmitrygr » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

hrmtst93837 wrote: post #34

dmitrygr wrote: post #8

Consider this your call to write native software. There is yet to be a supply chain attack on libc

[flagged]

100% with you. Anything that builds from the first try is 100% malicious. No real software builds without 5-30 tweaks of the makefile. And anything on npm/pip is malicious with a fixed chance that you have no control over, as seen in this attack.

But the data remains: no supply chain attacks on libc yet, so even if it COULD happen, this HAS and that merely COULD.

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#38

Post by dmitrygr » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:24 PM UTC

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #36

dmitrygr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think supply chain attacks will just get worse? I'm thinking that defensive measures will get better rapidly (especially after this hack) I think the attacks will get worse and more frequent -- ML tools enable doing it easily among people who were previously not competent enough to pull it off but now can. There is no stomach for the proper defensive measures among the community for either python or javascri…

Not only do the tools enable incompetent attackers, they also enable a new class of incompetent library developers to create and publish packages, and a new class of incompetent application developers to install packages without even knowing what packages are being used in the code they aren't reading, and a new class of incompetent users who are allowing OpenClaw to run completely arbitrary code on their machines wi…

100%

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#39

Post by Shank » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:25 PM UTC

Probably one of the best things about AI/LLMs is the democratization of reverse engineering and analysis of payloads like this. It’s a very esoteric skill to learn by hand and not very immediately rewarding out of intellectual curiosity most times. You can definitely get pointed in the right direction easily, now, though!

Re: My minute-by-minute response to the LiteLLM malware attack

#40

Post by charcircuit » Thu, Mar 26, 2026, 5:26 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #12

cedws wrote: post #5

GitHub, npm, PyPi, and other package registries should consider exposing a firehose to allow people to do realtime security analysis of events. There are definitely scanners that would have caught this attack immediately, they just need a way to be informed of updates.

PyPI does exactly that, and it's been very effective. Security partners can scan packages and use the invite-only API to report them: https://blog.pypi.org/posts/2024-03-06-malware-reporting-evo...

It is not effective if it just takes a simple base64 encode to bypass. If Claude is trivially able to find that it is malicious then Pypi is being negligent.