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Shai-Hulud malware attack: Tinycolor and over 40 NPM packages compromised

(socket.dev)
1208 points jamesberthoty | 3 comments | 16 Sep 25 11:22 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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codemonkey-zeta ◴[16 Sep 25 11:56 UTC] No.45261026[source]▶
I'm coming to the unfortunate realizattion that supply chain attacks like this are simply baked into the modern JavaScript ecosystem. Vendoring can mitigate your immediate exposure, but does not solve this problem.

These attacks may just be the final push I needed to take server rendering (without js) more seriously. The HTMX folks convinced me that I can get REALLY far without any JavaScript, and my apps will probably be faster and less janky anyway.

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jeswin ◴[16 Sep 25 13:27 UTC] No.45261970[source]▶
Traditional JS is actually among the safest environments ever created. Every day, billions of devices run untrusted JS code, and no other platform has seen sandboxed execution at such scale. And in nearly three decades, there have been very few incidents of large successful attacks on browser engines. That makes the JS engine derived from browsers the perfect tool to build a server side framework out of.

However, processes and practices around NodeJS and npm are in dire need of a security overhaul. leftpad is a cultural problem that needs to be addressed. To start with, snippets don't need to be on npm.

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spankalee ◴[16 Sep 25 13:44 UTC] No.45262184[source]▶
Sandboxing doesn't do any good if the malicious code and target data are in the same sandbox, which is the whole point of these supply-chain attacks.
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1. pixl97 ◴[16 Sep 25 14:40 UTC] No.45262918[source]▶
I mean, what does do good if your supply chain is attacked?

This said, less potential vendors supplying packages 'may' reduce exposure, but doesn't remove it.

Either way, not running the bleeding edge packages unless it's a known security fix seems like a good idea.

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2. spankalee ◴[16 Sep 25 18:24 UTC] No.45265911[source]▶
The supply chain infrastructure needs to stop being naive and allowing for insecure publishing.

- npm should require 2FA disallow tokens for publishing. This is an option, but it should be a requirement.

- npm should require using a trusted publisher and provenance for package with over 100k downloads a week and their dependencies.

- Github should require a 2FA step for automated publishing

- npm should add a cool down period where if won't install brand new packages without a flag

- npm should stop running postinstall scripts.

- npm should have an option to not install packages without provenance.

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3. raxxorraxor ◴[16 Sep 25 21:57 UTC] No.45268709[source]▶
The reality is that for a huge crowd of developers 2FA doesn't do shit.