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OpenAI's response to the Axios developer tool compromise
- fortuitous-frog 5mo agoInteresting that (1) this blog post published on April 10th, 10 days after the Axios compromise, and (2) this was emailed to ChatGPT / Codex users yesterday, April 21st, 11 days after the blog post... After an incident as widely publicized as Axios, I'd expect dependency auditing, credential rotation, and public incident communication to all be carried out with much more urgency. And if they were going to send this out to all of their users (as they should), I would expect _that_ to happen shortly after publishing the post (why wait 11 days???).
- himata4113 5mo ago"April 10, 2026" I don't blame you, took me awhile to find the date.
- danscan 5mo agoAxios, like Express, is something I'm shocked to see used in any modern codebase. I loved both in the 2010s. In JS/TS-land there are much simpler and better options these days. Depending on Axios suggests the devs don't know how to use fetch. I can't think of another reason it would be a necessary dependency
- jwilliams 5mo agoI do "just use fetch" nowadays -- but I have to say, axios definitely has better ergonomics than fetch, especially for calling APIs.
- nurettin 5mo agoWhen the vulnerability was announced, it took me two minutes to one-shot convert an entire legacy project from axios to fetch (it already wrapped api calls neatly), react cra to vite, update all dependencies, convert to deep imports to reduce bundle size and get zero npm warnings while fetching coffee. There is just no excuse to use it.
- ipaddr 5mo agoMove from a tested library where when a vulnerability is discovered everyone in the world is made aware to an untested one shot llm output that if a vulnerability is discovered will never come to light . What's the reason to switch to something less stable short/long term? Because its older and newer code is always better?
- nurettin 5mo agoThat's like saying rpad is well tested. Axios isn't exactly rocket science, it is trivial to replace. So much so that even a SOTA llm does it reliably. I'd say good riddance.
- sampullman 5mo agoI drag a tiny fetch wrapper around with error/json handling, timeouts and basic interceptor support. It doesn't cover everything axios does but it's nice enough and I haven't had to touch it in a couple years. For reference: https://github.com/sampullman/fetch-api/blob/main/lib/fetchApi.ts https://github.com/sampullman/fetch-api/blob/main/lib/fetchA...
- tracker1 5mo agoI often do similar... though most of the time the past couple years, I'm generating the client from OpenAPI integration on the backend that uses fetch as its' base.
- danpalmer 5mo agoIf you want a fully built out network layer, with auth, logging, monitoring, policies, etc, then `fetch` doesn't really help. Axios and other libraries provide much more for building that sort of framework.
- internetter 5mo agoAny sufficiently competent typescript developer can build out an adhoc wrapper (that just inherits the type definition and passes along whatever it is passed after altering it however needed) in under a hour. It doesn't scale in the sense that you don't expose a configuration, but config as code is king. (Source: have built out much more scuffed variants of this than the one I just described like https://github.com/boehs/ajar https://github.com/boehs/ajar) I guess a LLM can do as well. Although that's not something I'm quite ready to admit.
- whattheheckheck 5mo agoKeep developing it. Your taste and judgement matter
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 5mo agoI've wrapped fetch a few times but i don't think I'd blame someone if they got tired of wrapping it and wanted a consistent interface across all the projects they work on.
- interstice 5mo agoAh yes ad hoc, the best way to write fundamental utilities underpinning every fetch your app makes.
- internetter 5mo agoWrapping fetch is not rocket science
- chvid 5mo agoChatGPT in general recommends axios over fetch. (At least it did about 2 months ago)
- internetter 5mo agoThis is why people still need to know how to write code and why it is asinine to have an LLM write code without a human reading it. Good developers should know what good code looks like and push back when what they're fed is wrong.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- toraway 5mo agoYep, Claude made an executive decision to use Axios when it built one of my projects 9 months ago or so. ... and would then forget to use it 1/5 times and break auth/sessions in new code handling by using plain fetch.
- tommy_axle 5mo agoI wouldn't go that far. Right tool for the job as always. Axios offers a lot over fetch for all but the simplest use cases plus you get to take advantage of the ecosystem. Need offline, axios-cache-interceptor already exists. Sure you can do all of those things with fetch but you need more to go with it taking you right back to just using axios. Also is no one annoyed that you can't replay fetch like the xhr? Same with express: solves a problem reliably.
- ariwilson 5mo agoWhat's wrong with Express?
- internetter 5mo agoJust slow and convoluted internals due to the accumulation of cruft over time
- rozenmd 5mo agoSeveral newer alternatives that outperform it on Node, like Hono
- koolba 5mo agoWhat’s wrong with express?
- seanp2k2 5mo agojQuery is still useful too. May you never work in heathcare / government / defense where you need to support legacy browsers far past their expiration date.
- zarzavat 5mo ago> Depending on Axios suggests the devs don't know how to use fetch. You could equally say that using fetch means that the developers don't know how to use axios. They do the same thing, except axios does it a little better, when it doesn't pwn you. Axios predates the availability of fetch in node by 2 years, and fetch has never caught up with axios so there was no reason to switch to fetch, unless you need to run on both client and server then of course you use fetch.
- samtrack2019 5mo agoI compare this to the request and httplib in python, request library is vastly superior in usability but both do the same..
- kamranjon 5mo agoIn what ways has fetch never caught up to axios? I have not encountered a situation where I could not use fetch in the last 5 years so I'm just curious what killer features axios has that are still missing in fetch (I certainly remember using axios many moons ago).
- mattmanser 5mo agoSimple examples are interceptors and error handling. Fetch is one of those things I keep trying to use, but then sorely regret doing so because it's a bit rubbish. You're probably reinventing axios functionality, badly, in your code. It's especially useful when you want consistent behaviour across a large codebase, say you want to detect 401s from your API and redirect to a login page. But you don't want to write that on every page. Now you can do monkey patching shenanigans, or make your own version of fetch like myCompanyFetch and enforce everyone uses it in your linter, or some other rubbish solution. Or you can just use axios and an interceptor. Clean, elegant. And every project gets to a size where you need that functionality, or it was a toy and who cares what you use.
- msl 5mo agoForcing everyone to use ourFetch is rubbish, but forcing everyone to use axios is clean and elegant? You might want to elaborate just a little more.
- dheerajvs 5mo agoAnnoyingly, fetch does not support progress events and HTML / XML Document parsing, which are both supported by XMLHttpRequest, which Axios is based on.
- azangru 5mo ago> Axios, like Express, is something I'm shocked to see used in any modern codebase I am totally with you on axios; but why is express shocking, and what do you expect to see in its place? Fastify? Hono? Node:http?
- Chyzwar 5mo agoBecause your fetch most likely mishandle errors, lack retries, fail on redirects and is unnecessary verbose for both people and agents.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- mrcwinn 5mo agoAbove and beyond post. This is good.
- johnwhitman 5mo ago[dead]
- eranation 5mo agoAs others said, no one should be using axios in 2026, fetch has been available in node v18 (experimental) in 2022 [0], stable since v21 in 2023 [1], although Claude Code sometimes will suggest it, probably worth adding a rule. Side note. I'm sure many of you know this, but for those who don't, setting min-release-age=7 in .npmrc (needs npm 11.10+), would have made the malicious axios (@1.14.1 and @0.30.4) invisible to npm install (removed within ~3h). Same for ua-parser-js (caught within hours) and node-ipc (caught in days). It wouldn't have prevented event-stream (over 2 months), but you can't win them all. Some examples (hat tip to [2]): ~/.config/uv/uv.toml exclude-newer = "7 days" ~/.npmrc min-release-age=7 # days ~/Library/Preferences/pnpm/rc minimum-release-age=10080 # minutes ~/.bunfig.toml [install] minimumReleaseAge = 604800 # seconds p.s. sorry for the plug, but we released a free tool ([3]) to gather all these settings + a cli to auto configure them. You can set these settings without it, but if you are confused (like me) with what is in minutes, what's in seconds, what is in days and where each of them is located, this might save you a few keystrokes / prompts (it also ensures you have the right min version for the package manager, otherwise you'll have the settings but they would be ignored...) [0] https://nodejs.org/en/blog/announcements/v18-release-announce https://nodejs.org/en/blog/announcements/v18-release-announc... [1] https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v21.0.0 https://nodejs.org/en/blog/release/v21.0.0 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47513932 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47513932 [3] https://depsguard.com https://depsguard.com
- ga_to 5mo agoNice ad you got there. How do I define request interceptors with fetch? Axios does it.
- eranation 5mo agoYou can add your own wrapper but if you're building a whole auth/retry/logging layer, axios is probably better for that. For most other use cases a small wrapper will do the job. Didn't mean it as an ad btw, the supply chain risk is real though. Axios could be the best HTTP library ever written and it still would've dropped a RAT on your laptop on March 31 without min-release-age set.
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- nikhilpareek13 5mo ago[flagged]
- sdevonoes 5mo agoUsing TS/JS in the backend is irresponsible in 2026. We have better languages and ecosystems
- PufPufPuf 5mo agoOther ecosystems have better protections against compromised packages? I don't see it.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- anothereng 5mo agoany ecosystem that doesnt encourage bunch of useless dependencies is better than one who does
- knocte 5mo agoThe real issue is the cancer practice in our software development industry of updating dependencies for the sake of updating. Deps should be updated when you need some features or bugfixes from the new versions; not just when DependaBot prompts you to do it. I see value in DependaBot and things like that only to check that your module still passes your CI with upgraded dependencies (and if not, then it's worth looking at the failure, to be prepared for the updgrade in the future).
- immanuwell 5mo ago[dead]
- mlitwiniuk 5mo agoI’m a web dev, I never made publicly accessible desktop app, so please forgive my ignorance, but: > At that time, a GitHub Actions workflow we use in the macOS app-signing process downloaded and executed a malicious version of Axios (version 1.14.1) So if I understand this correctly their GH Actions is free to upgrade the package just like that? Is this normal practice or it’s just shifting blame?
- eranation 5mo agoI believe you understand correctly. And yes, it’s both a bad practice and shifting blame. But it’s not an uncommon practice sadly. They mention it toward the end: > The root cause of this incident was a misconfiguration in the GitHub Actions workflow, which we have addressed. Specifically, the action in question used a floating tag, as opposed to a specific commit hash, and did not have a configured minimumReleaseAge for new packages. Some preventive actions everyone should take: 1. pin GitHub actions to SHAs (GitHub sadly doesn’t enforce immutable tags, it’s opt in only, but commits are practically non-repeatable, minus sha collision), also even if an action it’s not compromised directly, the latest version might be using a compromised dependency, so by taking the latest of one you get the latest (compromised) of the other. Pinning just prevents auto updates like this. 2. do npm ci instead of npm install (the first will be using a lock file the other may take the latest depending on how your package.json defines dependencies) 3. have a min release age (e.g. min-release-age=7 in .npmrc) most recent SSC attacks were removed from npm within hours. Adding a delay is similar to a live broadcast “bleep” delay.
- chrisweekly 5mo agoSolid advice -- though I recommend pnpm over npm (for better speed, determinism, node_modules bloat reduction, dep graph mgmt, install script safety,...)
- eranation 5mo agoI echo your recommendation.
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- docheinestages 5mo ago> Out of an abundance of caution we are taking steps to protect the process that certifies our macOS applications are legitimate OpenAI apps. What did I just read?
- SSLy 5mo agoI'd assume they're retiring their old codesign certificates and rolling new ones, hopefully on a HSM or sth
- eranation 5mo agoThey used a GitHub action with a floating tag (I guess @latest or non SHA pinned e.g. @v4) that I’m assuming in turn had its latest version bringing latest axios. That GitHub action used to sign their Mac apps. So they assume the certificate used to sign is compromised. The risk is not to existing app, but theoretically someone could give you a copy of a malicious OpenAI binary, sign it with the compromised certificate, and impersonate OpenAI. Unlikely, but not impossible.
- tomalbrc 5mo agoWhatever. If you are still using OpenAI products, shame on you.
- takihito 5mo ago[dead]