I wonder what could one do if he wants to use NPM for programming with a very popular framework (like Angular or Vue) and stay safe. Is just picking a not very recent version of the top level framework (Angular, etc.) enough? Is it possible to somehow isolate NPM so the code it runs, like those postinstall hooks, doesn't mess with your system, while at the same time allowing you to use it normally?
NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
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Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#42>When you run npm install, npm doesn't just download packages. It executes code. Specifically, it runs lifecycle scripts defined in package.json - preinstall, install, and postinstall hooks. What's the legitimate use case for a package install being allowed to run arbitrary commands on your computer? Quote is from the researchers report https://www.koi.ai/blog/phantomraven-npm-malware-hidden-in-i... edit: I was think…
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Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#43>When you run npm install, npm doesn't just download packages. It executes code. Specifically, it runs lifecycle scripts defined in package.json - preinstall, install, and postinstall hooks. What's the legitimate use case for a package install being allowed to run arbitrary commands on your computer? Quote is from the researchers report https://www.koi.ai/blog/phantomraven-npm-malware-hidden-in-i... edit: I was think…
pnpm v10 disables all lifecycle scripts by default and requires the user to whitelist packages. https://github.com/orgs/pnpm/discussions/8945
Bun also doesn't execute lifestyle scripts by default, except for a customizable whitelist of trusted dependencies:
Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#44As a hobbyist how do I stay protected and in the loop for breaches like this? I often follow guides that are popular and written by well-respected authors and I might be too flippant with installing dependencies trying to solve a pain point that has derailed my original project. Somewhat related, I also have a small homelab running local services and every now and then I try a new technology. occasionally I’ll build…
If you're on Linux, I've tried to build an easy yet secure way to isolate your system from your coding projects with containers. See https://github.com/evertheylen/probox
Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#45As a hobbyist how do I stay protected and in the loop for breaches like this? I often follow guides that are popular and written by well-respected authors and I might be too flippant with installing dependencies trying to solve a pain point that has derailed my original project. Somewhat related, I also have a small homelab running local services and every now and then I try a new technology. occasionally I’ll build…
> As a hobbyist how do I stay protected and in the loop for breaches like this? For the case of general software, "Don't use node" would be my advice, and by extension any packaging backend without external audit and validation. PyPI has its oopses too, Cargo is theoretically just as bad but in practice has been safe. The gold standard is Use The Software Debian Ships (Fedora is great too, arch is a bit down the ladd…
As a hobyist (or profesionally) you can also write code without dependencies outside of node itself.
Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#46I wonder what could one do if he wants to use NPM for programming with a very popular framework (like Angular or Vue) and stay safe. Is just picking a not very recent version of the top level framework (Angular, etc.) enough? Is it possible to somehow isolate NPM so the code it runs, like those postinstall hooks, doesn't mess with your system, while at the same time allowing you to use it normally?
One option to make it a little safer is to add ignore-scripts=true to a .npmrc file in your project root. Lifestyle scripts then won't run automatically. It's not as nice as Pnpm or Bun, though, since this also prevents your own postinstall scripts from running (not just those of dependencies), and there's no way to whitelist trusted packages.
Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a hobbyist how do I stay protected and in the loop for breaches like this? For the case of general software, "Don't use node" would be my advice, and by extension any packaging backend without external audit and validation. PyPI has its oopses too, Cargo is theoretically just as bad but in practice has been safe. The gold standard is Use The Software Debian Ships (Fedora is great too, arch is a bit down the ladd…
Having spent a year trying to develop against dependencies only provided by a debian release, it is really painful in practice. At some point you're going to need something that is not packaged, or newer than the packaged version in your release.
That's when you join debian :)
Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#48As a hobbyist how do I stay protected and in the loop for breaches like this? I often follow guides that are popular and written by well-respected authors and I might be too flippant with installing dependencies trying to solve a pain point that has derailed my original project. Somewhat related, I also have a small homelab running local services and every now and then I try a new technology. occasionally I’ll build…
> As a hobbyist how do I stay protected and in the loop for breaches like this? For the case of general software, "Don't use node" would be my advice, and by extension any packaging backend without external audit and validation. PyPI has its oopses too, Cargo is theoretically just as bad but in practice has been safe. The gold standard is Use The Software Debian Ships (Fedora is great too, arch is a bit down the ladd…
Didn't Debian ship a uniquely weak version of OpenSSL for years? HeartBleed perhaps?
IME Debian is falling behind on security fixes.
Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#49>When you run npm install, npm doesn't just download packages. It executes code. Specifically, it runs lifecycle scripts defined in package.json - preinstall, install, and postinstall hooks. What's the legitimate use case for a package install being allowed to run arbitrary commands on your computer? Quote is from the researchers report https://www.koi.ai/blog/phantomraven-npm-malware-hidden-in-i... edit: I was think…
> doesn't just download packages. It executes code. Specifically, it
It pains me to remember that the reason LLMs write like this is because many humans did in the training data.
Re: NPM flooded with malicious packages downloaded more than 86k times
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As a hobbyist how do I stay protected and in the loop for breaches like this? For the case of general software, "Don't use node" would be my advice, and by extension any packaging backend without external audit and validation. PyPI has its oopses too, Cargo is theoretically just as bad but in practice has been safe. The gold standard is Use The Software Debian Ships (Fedora is great too, arch is a bit down the ladd…
Didn't Debian ship a uniquely weak version of OpenSSL for years? HeartBleed perhaps? IME Debian is falling behind on security fixes.
They did, and no one is perfect. But Debian is the best.
FWIW, the subject at hand here isn't accidentally introduced security bugs (which affect all software and aren't well treated by auditing and testing). It's deliberately malicious malware appearing as a dependency to legitimate software.
So the use case here isn't Heartbleed, it's something like the xz-utils trojan. I'll give you one guess as to who caught that.