Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

stepsecurity.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

701–710 of 894 posts

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#701

Post by fn-mote »

zymhan wrote: post #694
integralid wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What type of developer chooses UX and performance over security? So reckless. Initially I assumed this is sarcastic, but apparently not. UX and performance is what programmers are paid to do! Making sure UX is good is one of the most important things in programmer job. While security is a moving target, a goal, something that can never be perfect, just "good enough" (if NSA wants to hack you, they will). You make it…

Installing 3rd party packages the way Node and Python devs do regularly _is_ a security hole.

We definitely agree on that. Fortunately some of the 600+ comments here include suggestions of what to do about it.

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#702

Post by mayhemducks »

kjok wrote: post #678

Curious to know why are coding agents not detecting such risks before importing dependencies?

I'm assuming you are talking about agents like claude-code and open-code which rely on GPT functions (AKA Large Language Models).

The reason they don't detect these risks is primarily because these risks are emergent, and happen overnight (literally in the case of axios - compromised at night). Axios has a good reputation. It is by definition impossible for a pre-trained LLM to keep up with time-sensitive changes.

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#703

Post by pagecalm »

This is the part that's tough — we push everyone to keep dependencies updated and automate it with Renovate or Dependabot, but that's exactly the pipeline that would have pulled this in before anyone noticed. Lockfiles and pinning help slow it down, but most teams pair those with automated update PRs which kind of negates the point. You can reduce your dependency surface area to lower the odds but one compromised maintainer on a top-10 package and none of that matters.

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#704

Post by a13n »

Rejecting any packages newer than X days is one nice control, but ultimately it'd be way better to maintain an allowlist of which packages are allowed to run scripts.

Unfortunately npm is friggen awful at this...

You can use --ignore-scripts=true to disable all scripts, but inevitably, some packages will absolutely need to run scripts. There's no way to allowlist specific scripts to run, while blocking all others.

There are third-party npm packages that you can install, like @lavamoat/allow-scripts, but to use these you need to use an entirely different command like `npm setup` instead of the `npm install` everyone is familiar with.

This is just awful in so many ways, and it'd be so easy for npm to fix.

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#705

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

carlbarrdahl wrote: post #693
Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carl, with all due respect, have you used AI for making this hackmd post? "it's not just a waste of money — it's a security problem" I am really passionate about these things, but I am not going to read something which you haven't written. Even sharing a prompt/rough-sketches/raw-writing might be beneficial but I recommend writing it by-hand man, we are all burnt out reading AI slop, I can't read more AI

You're right, I used an LLM to help write it from sketches. Gonna rewrite it properly because I think the ideas are worth exploring. Thanks for taking the time to read and reply.

In my opinion, its okay to use LLM to help find some sources and then validating them (but I also recommend using hand researching too as you might find some good things that you maybe weren't even looking for!)

but, please don't use LLM to help write it from sketches. Even show the sketch :)

Much of my writing is very sketch-y. Some people don't like it, but its mine and I am proud of it and I hope that even if you write sketches/refine them, you can be comfortable sharing your ideas in your words in the way you wish to write them carl!

My thinking is that, I improve my writing by well... practice itself. So I write publically and there are some thoughts which occur in my head during the writing process itself (PG has a good article about it recently)

In a world of AI, to me, Human writing is a breath of fresh air. Please don't fall into the rabbit-hole that you might need LLM to help write you.

These are just my 2 cents though, but I feel like I am definitely not alone in thinking so.

Have a nice day and I am looking forward for you to write the article yourself. Feel free to share me when you do with my mail as I would love to read it, as I am also passionate about the funding of open source :)

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#706

Post by zymhan »

mrits wrote: post #696
zymhan wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are going to be out of date whenever a standard changes (HTML, etc.) You might want to elaborate on the "etc.", since HTML updates are glacial.

glaciers change faster than HTML

Oof, I honestly hadn't considered that.

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#707

Post by [deleted] »

zymhan wrote: post #692
rhdunn wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several issues with "Batteries Included" ecosystems (like Python, C#/.NET, and Java): 1. They are not going to include everything. This includes things like new file formats. 2. They are going to be out of date whenever a standard changes (HTML, etc.), application changes (e.g. SQLite/PostgreSQL/etc. for SQL/ORM bindings), or API changes (DirectX, Vulcan, etc.). 3. Things like data structures, graphics APIs…

> They are going to be out of date whenever a standard changes (HTML, etc.) You might want to elaborate on the "etc.", since HTML updates are glacial.

[deleted]

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#708

Post by kjok »

mayhemducks wrote: post #702
kjok wrote: post #678

Curious to know why are coding agents not detecting such risks before importing dependencies?

I'm assuming you are talking about agents like claude-code and open-code which rely on GPT functions (AKA Large Language Models). The reason they don't detect these risks is primarily because these risks are emergent, and happen overnight (literally in the case of axios - compromised at night). Axios has a good reputation. It is by definition impossible for a pre-trained LLM to keep up with time-sensitive changes.

I mean that agents can scan the code to find anything "suspicious". After all, security vendors that claim to "detect" malware in packages are relying on LLMs for detection.

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#709

Post by spixy »

mrits wrote: post #695
rhdunn wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several issues with "Batteries Included" ecosystems (like Python, C#/.NET, and Java): 1. They are not going to include everything. This includes things like new file formats. 2. They are going to be out of date whenever a standard changes (HTML, etc.), application changes (e.g. SQLite/PostgreSQL/etc. for SQL/ORM bindings), or API changes (DirectX, Vulcan, etc.). 3. Things like data structures, graphics APIs…

Python, .NET, and Java are not examples of batteries included. Django and Spring

comparing to Node, .NET is batteries included: built-in Linq vs needing lodash external package, built-in Decimal vs decimal.js package, built-in model validation vs class-validator & class-transformer packages, built-in CSRF/XSRF protection vs csrf-csrf package, I can go on for a while...

Re: Axios compromised on NPM – Malicious versions drop remote access trojan

#710

Post by toss1 »

integralid wrote: post #453
paintbox wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of developer chooses UX and performance over security? So reckless. I removed the locks from all the doors, now entering/exiting is 87% faster! After removing all the safety equipment, our vehicles have significantly improved in mileage, acceleration and top speed!

>What type of developer chooses UX and performance over security? So reckless. Initially I assumed this is sarcastic, but apparently not. UX and performance is what programmers are paid to do! Making sure UX is good is one of the most important things in programmer job. While security is a moving target, a goal, something that can never be perfect, just "good enough" (if NSA wants to hack you, they will). You make it…

Even more wild to read that sarcasm about "removing locks from doors for 87% speedup" is considered extreme...

And yes, we agree that running unconstrained AI agents with --dangerous-skip-confirm flags and seeing nothing wrong with it is insane. Kind of like just advertising for burglars to come open your doors for you before you get home - yeah, it's lots faster to get in (and to move about the house with all your stuff gone).

Post reply on HN