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Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

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Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#161

Post by weinzierl »

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 goid defense in depth measure but doesn't solve one fundamental issue. You might be protected during developement by the sandbox but your users are not necessarily. I think we as developers should not give any sotware we do not trust to our users.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#162

Post by germandiago »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #157
jerpint wrote: post #137

I wonder why we can’t have pip packages be published by username or organization, like pip install google/tensorflow It would significantly reduce the attack space

It gives false sense of security. What about google_official/tensorflow

It would still be an improvement if companies make clear what their namespace is.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#163

Post by datalopers »

heleninboodler wrote: post #144

This type of stuff is one reason I like vendoring all my deps in golang. You have to be very explicit about updating dependencies, which can be a big hassle, but you're required to do a git commit of all the changes, which gives you a good time to actually browse through the diffs. If you update dependencies incrementally, it's not even that big a job. Of course, this doesn't guarantee I won't miss any malicious code…

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Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#164

Post by heleninboodler »

augusto-moura wrote: post #159
heleninboodler wrote: post #144

This type of stuff is one reason I like vendoring all my deps in golang. You have to be very explicit about updating dependencies, which can be a big hassle, but you're required to do a git commit of all the changes, which gives you a good time to actually browse through the diffs. If you update dependencies incrementally, it's not even that big a job. Of course, this doesn't guarantee I won't miss any malicious code…

The problem is the tree of dependencies you might check. Sure you can check the changes in a direct dependency, but when that dependency updates a few others and those update a few others, the number of lines you need to read grow very quickly

Golang flattens the entire dependency tree into your vendor directory. It's still not that big. The current project I am working on has 3 direct external dependencies, which expands out into 22 total dependencies, 9 of which are golang.org/x packages (high level of scrutiny/trust). It's really quite manageable.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#165

Post by RockRobotRock »

mr_mitm wrote: post #148
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does GitHub actually prohibit programs that are up front about the fact they do something questionable? Considering there have been active repos for those steam pirating DLLs on the site for ages I thought they only really go after hidden maliciousness

Considering the entire open source pentesting community almost exclusively uses GitHub to host their projects: no. There is actual malware being hosted on GitHub, with the caveat that malware and pentest tools or proof of concept exploits are sometimes indistinguishable. GitHub announced a few years ago that they would crack down on malware and were about to introduce some very strict T&C. After a huge backlash from…

I completely agree, despite the wording of my comment. In this case, the user has a different GH account for hosting their malware and C2, but the fact that they're so flagrant about it is what bothers me.

I was a skid once, I get it, probably a lot of us were.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#166

Post by erustemi »

I think a proper way to solve this issue, not specific to python but languages running in a VM in general, would be to have some sort of language support where you specifically define what access rights/ system resources you allow for any given dependency.

Example of defining project dependencies:

  {
    "apollo-client": {
      "version": "...",
      "access": ["fetch"] // only fetch allowed
    },
    "stringutils": {
       "version": "...",
       "access": [] // no system resources allowed for this dependency, own or transitive
    },
    ...
  }
It would probably require the language to limit monkey-patching core primitives (such as Object.prototype in javascript), and it would be more cumbersome for the developer to define the permissions it gives to each dependency. These required permissions could be listed on the package site (eg npm or PyPI) and the developer would just copy paste the permissions when adding the dependency. But if you upgrade a dependency version and it now requires a permission that seems suspicious (eg "stringutils" needing "filesystem"), it would prompt the developer to stop and investigate, or if it seems justified add the permission to "access" list.

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#167

Post by blibble »

jerpint wrote: post #137

I wonder why we can’t have pip packages be published by username or organization, like pip install google/tensorflow It would significantly reduce the attack space

Maven had this 20 years ago

quite why python refuses to learn from anything that went before it I really dont know

“Namespaces are one honking great idea — let's do more of those!”

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#168

Post by permo-w »

jerpint wrote: post #137

I wonder why we can’t have pip packages be published by username or organization, like pip install google/tensorflow It would significantly reduce the attack space

one of main issues I have with java is how messy it is to import external modules. python is a breath of fresh air comparitively. introducing this kind of thing as mandatory is a step away from that

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#169

Post by 7373737373 »

Programming languages have to become able to sandbox imported dependencies, to limit their side effects up to sandboxing them completely, ideally in a fine grained way that allows developers to gradually reduce the attack surface of even their own code

https://medium.com/agoric/pola-would-have-prevented-the-even...

https://github.com/void4/notes/issues/41

Re: Dozens of malicious PyPI packages discovered targeting developers

#170

Post by heleninboodler »

Scarblac wrote: post #160
plugin-baby wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And why is nodejs so much more dependency-happy than python? Could it be that nodejs has implemented package management more consistently and conveniently than other languages/platforms?

That's one thing, the other is the almost complete absence of a standard library.

Yeah, I think this is a big one. One of the things that I have always liked about Golang is that the standard library is quite complete and the implementations of things are (usually) not bare-bones implementations that you need to immediately replace with something "prod-ready" when you build a real project. There are exceptions, of course, but I think it's very telling that most of my teammates go so long without introducing new dependencies that they usually have to ask me how to do it. (I never said the ux was fantastic :) This also goes to GP's "consistent and convenient" argument.
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