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Dozens of Red Hat packages backdoored through its official NPM channel (arstechnica.com)

submitted 4 days ago by schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de to c/cybersecurity@sh.itjust.works

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[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 42 points 4 days ago (3 children)

I'm beginning to think this "NPM" thing isn't a great idea.

[–] ztwhixsemhwldvka@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago

Its always npm

[–] NotSteve_@lemmy.ca 6 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I don't really see how it's NPM at fault here. This was caused by a malicious actor taking control of an account and putting out bad packages on it. It could happen on any package repository for any language

[–] davidgro@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

My understanding is that for most package managers the signing keys are held by a smallish number of maintainers responsible for entire sections, who presumably keep those accounts pretty tightly secured. Not impossible to take over, but it's a smaller attack surface.

While for NPM as far as I know every uploader keeps their own account and there's not even signing keys to lose control of.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

I've heard quite a few PyPi and Cargo attacks though, but I bet the main reason why hear NPM so much is simply because NPM is the biggest, and thus the most valuable target

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Trust by default for a atomic packaging system. Entirely NPM's fault.

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I'm not familiar with npm but why is this always NPM? Is it a specific issue they have?

[–] knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works 24 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's a "package manager" that has zero integrity checks built in. Web devs also love it. Nice combination.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 2 points 4 days ago

Culture problem imo.

[–] hirihit640@sh.itjust.works 0 points 3 days ago

because it's the biggest. Just like how hackers target windows and not linux (assuming they are targeting users and not servers).