3 ms·

The fact that it's not sufficient also largely means it's not necessary either, because the real solution is auditing and trusting the codebase as a whole. All

by rcxdude 3mo ago

The fact that it's not sufficient also largely means it's not necessary either, because the real solution is auditing and trusting the codebase as a whole. All you do when disabling install hooks is make a lot of situations much more difficult to handle.

jitl 3mo ago
"make no mistakes" is not the "real solution"
- rcxdude 3mo ago
  Neither is 'close the gate with no fence on either side of it'. If you want to run code, you either need to run it in a sandbox or trust it. Choosing to run only part of the code is not really a solution. (if you want to disable such hooks yourself, then you may get some security by diversity because you're not using the common configuration. But if it becomes the default then these worms will switch to a different vector)
jerf 3mo ago
You will also not get very far in engineering if you have a production incident, someone proposes a thing that will mitigate it partially but significantly, and you insist that we can't deploy that mitigation because we need to do the multi-year project that will actually fix it instead. Even if we still need that project, we also need that mitigation. Sure, solve the problem of "auditing and trusting codebases". Go for it. Shouldn't take you until, oh, let me be generous and give you until next Monday. No sweat.
- rcxdude 3mo ago
  Feel free to turn it off yourself, just don't be surprised when the attackers switch tactics. And don't make life harder for everyone else by pushing it as mandatory. (if you want a better mitigation: don't automatically update dependencies in CI. At a minimum have a cooling-off period that you only bypass on manual review. This is not hard to implement and at least gives some time for alarm bells to be sounded before you're pwned. Probably while doing the updates you can also just do a quick sanity check on the changes, that'll also catch the ones using a blatant install hook)
  - esseph 3mo ago
    > if you want a better mitigation: don't automatically update dependencies in CI. At a minimum have a cooling-off period that you only bypass on manual review. This is not hard to implement and at least gives some time for alarm bells to be sounded before you're pwned. One of the problems a lot of companies are having right now is trying to determine a proper window size between CVE release and patching. On one hand, you have LLM created 0days and attacks are happening almost as fast as CVEs can be posted, and CVEs are being posted at lightning speed. You maybe had a month or a few weeks to patch before, now the window may be down to days or even hours. On the other hand, you want to prevent these repo bombing attacks. There's a tension there but I think we're going to end up measuring that window in hours within the year, if we're not already there.
    - rcxdude 3mo ago
      If you need quick responses to such things, you're gonna need some intelligence in the loop regardless, even if it's just deciding when it's worth pushing a new release to prod.
      - esseph 3mo ago
        What if it needs to get patched and pushed while you and everyone else in the org are asleep? I mean that's a big window of time now.
        rcxdude 3mo ago
        Always has been, arguably. Either way I don't think most people have their CI configured to automatically re-run when a dependency updates (imagine the thundering herd!), the compromises are more incidental to runs happening for other reasons, and that configuration neither guarantees a quick response nor protects against supply chain attacks. (If you find you do need updates when you're sleeping, you probably need to delegate that process or at least the process of checking the update to someone you trust, and you're probably paying for the service. This blog post is in large part an ad for just such a service).
- BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
  > You will also not get very far in engineering if Man, I wish.
fhdkweig 3mo ago
The term you are looking for is Defense in Depth/Layers
- rcxdude 3mo ago
  That makes sense if it's actually a layer. You can create a thousand minor obstacles and it still won't be a very secure system.
lkjdsklf 3mo ago
Missile defense systems are unnecessary because they could just use tanks Anti-tank measures are unnecessary because they can just use missiles
- rcxdude 3mo ago
  What's your solution to using a library without executing the code in it?
  - msm_ 3mo ago
    This is moving the goalposts. The original problem was that installing a library should not execute code from that library. In most sane environments, like for example native languages, this is already the case. Downloading a .dll file and putting it in an appropriate directory won't, by itself, execute code in that library. You may argue that the code will get executed at some point anyway, but that's besides the point. Sandboxing the build environment is a different problem than sandboxing the test/staging/production environment. I think we both agree that "adding random obstacles that don't actually protect anything" is not a valid approach to security, but my mental model of the build step is "transformation of input data into output data", and while this step may produce a malicious output from malicious inputs, it should not do anything malicious itself. For example, "gcc source.c" should not execute arbitrary code by itself.
    - rcxdude 3mo ago
      >In most sane environments, like for example native languages, this is already the case. Installing a node package is much more like compiling a dll, not downloading it. The same is true for most package managers that exist for C and C++ as languages as opposed to for an OS. These are two different tools for different use-cases. (though still pretty much all installation processes for all OSs involve an opportunity for arbitrary code execution, as well, apart from just downloading a zip file and extracting it, which is not the norm)

by rcxdude 3mo ago

jitl 3mo ago

"make no mistakes" is not the "real solution"

rcxdude 3mo ago
Neither is 'close the gate with no fence on either side of it'. If you want to run code, you either need to run it in a sandbox or trust it. Choosing to run only part of the code is not really a solution. (if you want to disable such hooks yourself, then you may get some security by diversity because you're not using the common configuration. But if it becomes the default then these worms will switch to a different vector)

jerf 3mo ago

You will also not get very far in engineering if you have a production incident, someone proposes a thing that will mitigate it partially but significantly, and you insist that we can't deploy that mitigation because we need to do the multi-year project that will actually fix it instead. Even if we still need that project, we also need that mitigation. Sure, solve the problem of "auditing and trusting codebases". Go for it. Shouldn't take you until, oh, let me be generous and give you until next Monday. No sweat.

rcxdude 3mo ago
Feel free to turn it off yourself, just don't be surprised when the attackers switch tactics. And don't make life harder for everyone else by pushing it as mandatory. (if you want a better mitigation: don't automatically update dependencies in CI. At a minimum have a cooling-off period that you only bypass on manual review. This is not hard to implement and at least gives some time for alarm bells to be sounded before you're pwned. Probably while doing the updates you can also just do a quick sanity check on the changes, that'll also catch the ones using a blatant install hook)
- esseph 3mo ago
  > if you want a better mitigation: don't automatically update dependencies in CI. At a minimum have a cooling-off period that you only bypass on manual review. This is not hard to implement and at least gives some time for alarm bells to be sounded before you're pwned. One of the problems a lot of companies are having right now is trying to determine a proper window size between CVE release and patching. On one hand, you have LLM created 0days and attacks are happening almost as fast as CVEs can be posted, and CVEs are being posted at lightning speed. You maybe had a month or a few weeks to patch before, now the window may be down to days or even hours. On the other hand, you want to prevent these repo bombing attacks. There's a tension there but I think we're going to end up measuring that window in hours within the year, if we're not already there.
  - rcxdude 3mo ago
    If you need quick responses to such things, you're gonna need some intelligence in the loop regardless, even if it's just deciding when it's worth pushing a new release to prod.
    - esseph 3mo ago
      What if it needs to get patched and pushed while you and everyone else in the org are asleep? I mean that's a big window of time now.
      - rcxdude 3mo ago
        Always has been, arguably. Either way I don't think most people have their CI configured to automatically re-run when a dependency updates (imagine the thundering herd!), the compromises are more incidental to runs happening for other reasons, and that configuration neither guarantees a quick response nor protects against supply chain attacks. (If you find you do need updates when you're sleeping, you probably need to delegate that process or at least the process of checking the update to someone you trust, and you're probably paying for the service. This blog post is in large part an ad for just such a service).
BigTTYGothGF 3mo ago
> You will also not get very far in engineering if Man, I wish.

fhdkweig 3mo ago

The term you are looking for is Defense in Depth/Layers

rcxdude 3mo ago
That makes sense if it's actually a layer. You can create a thousand minor obstacles and it still won't be a very secure system.

lkjdsklf 3mo ago

Missile defense systems are unnecessary because they could just use tanks Anti-tank measures are unnecessary because they can just use missiles

rcxdude 3mo ago
What's your solution to using a library without executing the code in it?
- msm_ 3mo ago
  This is moving the goalposts. The original problem was that installing a library should not execute code from that library. In most sane environments, like for example native languages, this is already the case. Downloading a .dll file and putting it in an appropriate directory won't, by itself, execute code in that library. You may argue that the code will get executed at some point anyway, but that's besides the point. Sandboxing the build environment is a different problem than sandboxing the test/staging/production environment. I think we both agree that "adding random obstacles that don't actually protect anything" is not a valid approach to security, but my mental model of the build step is "transformation of input data into output data", and while this step may produce a malicious output from malicious inputs, it should not do anything malicious itself. For example, "gcc source.c" should not execute arbitrary code by itself.
  - rcxdude 3mo ago
    >In most sane environments, like for example native languages, this is already the case. Installing a node package is much more like compiling a dll, not downloading it. The same is true for most package managers that exist for C and C++ as languages as opposed to for an OS. These are two different tools for different use-cases. (though still pretty much all installation processes for all OSs involve an opportunity for arbitrary code execution, as well, apart from just downloading a zip file and extracting it, which is not the norm)