I thought this was a really insightful post, until they used it to try and sell me on Gitlab’s security features.
Why would that make it any less insightfull?
GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
41–50 of 263 posts
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#42Does anyone know why NPM seems to be the only attractive target? Python and Java are very popular, but I haven't heard anything in those ecosystems for a while. Is it because something inherently "weak" about NPM, or simply because, like Windows or JavaScript, everyone uses it?
Larger attack surface (JS has been the #1 language on GitHub for years now) and more amateur developers (who are more likely to blindly install dependencies, not harden against dev attack vectors, etc).
Unfortunately, blindly installing dependencies at compile-time is something that many projects will do by default nowadays. It's not just "more amateur developers" who are at risk here.
I've even seen "setup scripts" for projects that will use root (with your permission) to install software. Such scripts are less common now with containers, but unfortunately containers aren't everything.
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#43The credential harvesting aspect is what concerns me most for the average developer. If you've ever run `npm install` on an affected package, your environment variables, .npmrc tokens, and potentially other cached credentials may have been exfiltrated. The action item for anyone potentially affected: rotate your npm tokens, GitHub PATs, and any API keys that were in environment variables. And if you're like most deve…
> anyone potentially affected
How does one know one is affected?
What's the point of rotating tokens if I'm not sure that I've been affected - the new tokens will just be ex-filtrated as well.
First step would be to identify infection, then clean up and then rotate tokens.
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#44Surely in this day and age we can fairly trivially find out these come from the usual suspects - China, Russia, Iran, etc. Being in such a digital age, where our economies are built on this tech...is this not effectively (economic) warfare? Why are so many governments blase about it?
The US and Israel also have advanced penetration teams. But they wouldn't be this sloppy - they want persistent advanced access. I suspect Iran, Russia and China also wouldn't be this sloppy. This is too wide ranging and easily detectable and scattershot. This feels like opportunistic cyber criminals, or North Korea (which acts like cyber criminals.)
Or anti-virus companies selling more of their wares.
This kind of large scale attack is perfect advertising for anyone selling protection against such attacks.
Spy agencies have no interest in selling protection.
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#45Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#46Does anyone know why NPM seems to be the only attractive target? Python and Java are very popular, but I haven't heard anything in those ecosystems for a while. Is it because something inherently "weak" about NPM, or simply because, like Windows or JavaScript, everyone uses it?
One factor is that node's philosophy is to have a very limited standard library and rely on community software for a ton of stuff. That means that not only the average project has a ton of dependencies, but also any given dependency will in turn have a ton of dependencies as well. there’s multiplicative effects in play.
This is the main reason. Pythons ecosystem also has silly trends and package churn, and plenty of untrained developers. It’s the lack of a proper standard library. As bad a language as it may be, Java shows how to get this right.
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#47Does anyone know why NPM seems to be the only attractive target? Python and Java are very popular, but I haven't heard anything in those ecosystems for a while. Is it because something inherently "weak" about NPM, or simply because, like Windows or JavaScript, everyone uses it?
I feel with Python upgrade cycle is slower. I upgrade dependencies when something is broken or there is known issue. That means any active vulnerabilities propagate slower. Slower propagation means lower risk. And also as there is fewer upstream packages impact of compromised maintainer is more limited.
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#48Surely in this day and age we can fairly trivially find out these come from the usual suspects - China, Russia, Iran, etc. Being in such a digital age, where our economies are built on this tech...is this not effectively (economic) warfare? Why are so many governments blase about it?
It shouldn't be a "get the foreigners!" situation. Sure that is a method of solving the symptoms. But what you're really asking for is ... a software bill of materials. Why dont we have that yet? Bc it's cheaper to get ripped off than it is to pay for a bom. Thats the real problem
SBOM really doesn't do much when compromise happens before or while you are building it. It really is orthogonal to these types of attacks. Best you can do is to find that you were compromise afterwards.
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, EV code signing certificates? Windows has that, and it'll verify that right in the OS. Git for instance, shows as being signed by CN = Johannes Schindelin O = Johannes Schindelin S = Nordrhein-Westfalen C = DE Downside is the cost. Certificates cost hundreds of dollars per year. There's probably some room to reduce cost, but not by much. You also run into issues of paying some homeless person $50 to use their ide…
How would the homeless chap have the creds or gravitas for people to trust him or her?
I don't really know who Johannes Schindelin is either but use git quite happily.
Re: GitLab discovers widespread NPM supply chain attack
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
One factor is that node's philosophy is to have a very limited standard library and rely on community software for a ton of stuff. That means that not only the average project has a ton of dependencies, but also any given dependency will in turn have a ton of dependencies as well. there’s multiplicative effects in play.
This is the main reason. Pythons ecosystem also has silly trends and package churn, and plenty of untrained developers. It’s the lack of a proper standard library. As bad a language as it may be, Java shows how to get this right.
> As bad a language as it may be, Java shows how to get this right.
To be fair Java has improved a lot over the last few years. I really have the feeling that Java is getting better, while C++ is getting worse.