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Can we stop using npm now?
I swear to god the number of attacks like this or spawned from other attacks like this is fucking stupid. I’ve gender seen anything like it.
This problem has nothing to do with NPM. Checkmarx was compromised last month, and during that compromise there were malicious VS Code extensions published to Visual Studio Code Marketplace. A Bitwarden developer says that somebody ran one of those malicious extensions, and GitHub API keys were stolen which were used in publishing the malicious CLI package.
It's probably better that it happened on NPM. If the CLI were only downloadable from the Bitwarden website, it would have likely taken longer for somebody to notice something was wrong.
Yes, but NPM has been had countless security problems, this isn't a new problem. Even tho this instance is not a problem of NPM itself, it still has been proven as one of the most unreliable and insecure package managers out there.
I'm not a particular fan of npm, but you'll probably see this kind of thing with any package manager of similar size. More a matter of what's the most attractive target than the package tech itself.
But why does NPM enable post install scripts by default? Why is there no way to define a minimum release age for dependency versions? It’s just poor design choices.
Genuine question. How is NPM more vulnerable than other repos? Haven't similar supply chain attacks succeeded at least as well as this one through GitHub itself and even Linux package repos?
Larger standard libraries do a lot. It's a lot harder to sneak vulnerabilities into the basic C# or Java or C++ libraries than it is to add a vulnerability to something one dude maintains in the javascript ecosystem.
And since javascript libraries tend to be so small and focused, it's become standard practice for even other libraries to pull in as many of those as they want.
And it stacks. Your libraries pull in other libraries which can pull in their own libraries. I had a project recently where I had maybe a dozen direct dependencies and they ended up pulling in 1,311 total libraries, largely all maintained by different people.
In a more sane ecosystem like C#, all the basics like string manipulation, email, or logging have libraries provided by Microsoft that have oversight when they're changed. There can be better, third-party libraries for these things (log4net is pretty great), but they have to compete with their reputation and value over the standard library, which tends to be a high bar. And libraries made on top of that system are generally pulling all those same, certified standard libraries. So you pull in 3 libraries and only one of those pulls in another third party single library. And you end up with 4 total third party libraries.
Javascript just doesn't really have a certified standard library.
(This certified standard library doesn't have to be proprietary. Microsoft has made C# open source, and Linus Torvalds with the Linux Kernel Organization holds ultimate responsibility for the Linux kernel.)
I will almost always choose .NET as my development platform when greenfielding a project for exactly this reason. It's an incredibly robust standard library that virtually guarantees I won't need to pull in a litany of additional utility libraries, and I can also expect that what libraries I do choose to bring in are highly unlikely to drag along a ridiculous parade of dependencies.
Part of the problem is also how many packages people bring in, even for the simplest of things.
I don't think you'll find another major repo with so many real-world incidents though. Whether this is because of a systemic problem or just because it's targeted more frequently, I'm not sure.
As someone completely unfamiliar with the JavaScript mess, are these security issues specific to npm the actual repository or npm the package manager?
If it's the latter, does using something else like yarn or bun instead help?
I think npm allows installation scripts which do make this worse, as a package can run arbitrary command at install time.
It's not, it's a problem of every package manager that do not use sources and checksums, like rust and python. Take a look at this article that does a better job then me at explaining the situation.
The good news is that there already is a gold standard for supply chain security: the Go programming language.
Lmfao
Npm probably has the biggest attack surface and many of the libraries hosted there are in extremely widespread use. They've taken some steps to mitigate these supply chain attacks, but as we've seen with more recent examples, it's unrealistic to think they can be prevented completely. Most of these attacks use stolen developer credentials, which invalidates almost all potential security measures on the registry side and the best you can hope for is catching a malicious package quickly. To be clear: I think the JS ecosystem is uniquely positioned to be the prime target of supply chain attacks and while that doesn't excuse the slow implementation of security measures from the npm team, the people arguing that other package managers and registries aren't vulnerable to this have to be huffing fumes.
That’s fair, I won’t pretend pypi/pip and running uvx is much safer than npx.
But why hasn’t JavaScript established a defacto stdlib to replace ask the left pads and is even type packages?
I’ve taken a near zero dependency policy on my personal projects regardless, and now I run most code in containers to sandbox it.
It has only been available for 2h30 on NPM, so unless you had the misfortune of installing the latest version in this short window, you should be fine. Thankfully people have been able to quickly catch this.
This is one of the reasons why I update a version or two behind. The other reason is because I'm lazy.
One lie and one truth in this sentence.
Laziness has some obscure advantages
I update after I feel all the early adopters have worked out all the bugs for me.
Pretty much with anything ya.
Unless there's some super important thing I need in the latest release, if my shit works and there's no security vulnerability, im in no rush to update.
reposting the tl;dr I wrote from another community...
Yesterday, for about 1h30min (starting at 5:57pm ET / 21:57 UTC) anyone installing the latest version of the command line interface of bitwarden was installing malware.
The malware steals GitHub/npm tokens, .ssh, .env, shell history, GitHub Actions and cloud secrets, then exfiltrates the data to private domains and as GitHub commits and doesn't seem to be targeting Bitwarden specifically, or user vaults.
There's no evidence that end user vault data was accessed or at risk, or that production data or production systems were compromised, according to their official statement.
It seems there were 334 bitwarden CLI downloads in this time period, some or many of which might have been from bots, so this is a higher bound to the number of affected users.
I really need to figure out a better sandboxing method for shells. It's crazy to be things where my keys, browser data, shell history are all accessible.
I do try to use firejail where possible, but it's quite cumbersome. Every so often I look for tools to help with this, but everything is oriented around making a specific program (e.g. Firefox, steam) work.
For cli I just use podman(/docker) containers. Good enough and I don't have to learn a new tool
Don't. Use. Npm.
That applies to pip and crate and all the other shitty lang package managers that totally fail at security
What should be used instead?
Easy, just vendor all your dependencies! Can't have a supply chain attack if you are the supply chain.
A package manager that uses cryptographic signatures. Apt had this since 2005 iirc. Use apt.
Honestly just fine use computers at all, completely eliminate the remote attack vector. And only drink rain water since city water can be compromised.
Or, recognize this is a normal part of using software and have more than 1 thing between you and a breach
The rules of cybersecurity:
Under no circumstances should you own a computer.
If you absolutely must own a computer, under no circumstances should you connect it to the internet.
If you absolutely must connect it to the internet, it’s too late and they already have you
Dude, rain water is full of pollutants too. 😂
lots of people recommend bitwarden, but i am more at peace with an offline password manager that i control like Keepass. You can also go the GNU route and use "pass" on Linux too
Or use a physical key like Yubikey to login
No. Offline password managers are also suspectible to supply chain risk.
Only if yubibkey worked for more than the handful of sites/services. I have one for my bitwarden as majority of places want to send a text or us totp.
I've been trialing Vaultwarden for a while and while I do like the server sync setup and clean web access, the Bitwarden browser plugin is just okay despite being an "enterprise" solution. It misses probably about 20% of websites when creating a new account, forcing you to grab the password from the generator history and make a new entry manually.
KeepassXC is much better in that regard, and it's almost as good as the default credential handler of Firefox, and it lets you set up a bunch of custom stuff to extend the functionality if you want. Plus it has some neat kbdx options aside from AES256.
Only downside is syncing, which I'm debating how I'll deal with something better than syncthing on android (protocol is great, android makes it a PITA to have a background process if its not Google spyware).
Everyone should be using minimumReleaseAge (or their package managers equivalent) to block installing recently updated packages.
Doesn't that cause issues if a backdoor happened a few months ago and you should be updating to a recent fixed version?
Zero day goes brrrr
Npm is a fucking mess...
I'll just keep using keepass.
Keep ass?
You know it
Yeah, as in keep it closed so you don't get fucked by the hackers.
Does this include the brew version?