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Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

blog.phylum.io

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Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#121

Post by remram »

coffeeblack wrote: post #107
lupire wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual is part of a solution but not the key: the key is to separate your dev env from your real life/business environment -- including all your personal and professional business data and web accounts that expose your financials and private data. If you log into your email from the virtual machine, you are at risk.

The only place I log into from the VM is Github, protected by 2FA in case any malware gets my password.

So the malware can delete all your projects or inject malware into them, but thankfully it won't be able to log in again later?

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#122

Post by RockRobotRock »

jorvi wrote: post #115
RockRobotRock wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? I know I'm biased because this affected me and I'm still mad about it, but I just don't buy it. I contacted them, showing the plainly obvious malicious account that was distributing malware. Two months later, they send me a generic message saying that they've "taken appropriate action", but the account and their payload was STILL THERE, they hadn't done anything. The attacker was rapidly changing their user…

I don't know what their standard for 'malicious' is, but they nuked Popcorn Time and Butter (the technological core without the actual piratey bits) from orbit until there was a huge amount of backlash.

I'm not even asking them to deal with the problem "systemically" or "at scale". I just want them to respond when I am trying to stop an active criminal campaign whose goal is to steal money and cryptocurrency from people.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#123

Post by remram »

neurostimulant wrote: post #93
avian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> discord webhook Hah. Is this true? I find it funny since IRC has/had this reputation for being a means of communication with malware and it's often blocked on this grounds. Nice to know that malware is going on with the times and is using Discord for that now.

Discord is great as command and control server because the malware author doesn't need to expose their ip address or implement a complex web of proxy to secure their C&C server.

Couldn't you use someone else's IRC server, the same way you use Discord's server?

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#124

Post by remram »

josephwegner wrote: post #38
zzzeek wrote: post #33

can there be a "blue checkmark" system for pypi authors? I'm sure that's been brought up and rejected for reasons .

Yes, this lines up with the "Critical Project" concept that has been floating around in the past year. It is... contentious to say the last. Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32111738

This gives a checkmark based on number of downloads, so there is absolutely no guarantee that the package doesn't do anything malicious or won't in the future.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#125

Post by cortesoft »

lovelearning wrote: post #47

In a previous HN discussion on the topic of rogue Python packages, readers had suggested bubblewrap and firejail for sandboxing. They limit the access a script and its packages have to your filesystem and network. I think that's the better approach - just assume all packages are malicious by default. Can't rely on scanners because of the large number of packages and attacks.

So that means you can never use any package in code that has to handle sensitive data or manipulate the host machine?

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#126

Post by peteatphylum »

zzzeek wrote: post #33

can there be a "blue checkmark" system for pypi authors? I'm sure that's been brought up and rejected for reasons .

This is the double-edged sword of open-source. It's awesome because anyone can contribute. It can be dangerous for the same reason, unfortunately.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#127

Post by ashishbijlani »

lovelearning wrote: post #47

In a previous HN discussion on the topic of rogue Python packages, readers had suggested bubblewrap and firejail for sandboxing. They limit the access a script and its packages have to your filesystem and network. I think that's the better approach - just assume all packages are malicious by default. Can't rely on scanners because of the large number of packages and attacks.

Plug: I've been building Packj [1] to address exactly this problem. It offers “audit” as well as “sandboxing” of PyPI/NPM/Rubygems packages and flags hidden malware or "risky” code behavior such as spawning of shell, use of SSH keys, and mismatch of GitHub code vs packaged code (provenance).

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#128

Post by louislang »

comboy wrote: post #114
louislang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Full disclosure, I am a co-founder at Phylum. We are actively working on a solution that will fully sandbox package installations for npm, yarn, poetry and others. It's rolled up as part of our core CLI [1], but is totally open source [2]: [1] https://github.com/phylum-dev/cli [2] https://github.com/phylum-dev/birdcage

Why is there so much discussion about sandboxing? Why wouldn't I put some malicious code in the package itself limiting myself to installation only?

A lot of the malware targeting developers is leveraging the installation hooks as the execution mechanism. So sandboxing the install helps stop this particular attack vector - which is why it gets talked about so much.

If you put code in the package itself, this would side step the "installation" sandbox. However we're also doing analysis of all packages introduced to the ecosystem to uncover things that are hiding in the packages themselves.

So you're right, we need a defense in depth approach here.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#129

Post by fsflover »

kibwen wrote: post #56
coffeeblack wrote: post #3

I started to develop only inside VMs, with a full Desktop, IDE, browser etc. inside the virtual machine. There have been to many contaminations of major package repos lately. Only one typo in an import statement up the dependency chain and you’d be compromised.

This is a good approach, though presumably the VM still has access to your Github credentials (via the browser) and your SSH keys? It'll limit the fallout of getting owned to anything reachable from Github (is it against Github's TOS to have multiple accounts?), less if you have 2FA (does there exist 2FA for SSH keys (I don't mean passphrases)?), but I think it would be better for just my build/run/test cycles to be…

> though presumably the VM still has access to your Github credentials (via the browser) and your SSH keys?

Not in Qubes OS:

https://github.com/Qubes-Community/Contents/blob/master/docs...

https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/split-gpg/

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#130

Post by neurostimulant »

remram wrote: post #123
neurostimulant wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Discord is great as command and control server because the malware author doesn't need to expose their ip address or implement a complex web of proxy to secure their C&C server.

Couldn't you use someone else's IRC server, the same way you use Discord's server?

I suppose you could, but have you seen how popular new opensource projets being run these days? Young devs really loves discord to the point of hosting documentations there. I imagine young malware authors are no different.
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