How does "You need my private key to sign the cross-env package" stop someone from creating a "crossenv" package? What does the specific workflow look like that makes sure I don't add the wrong thing to my project?
In this case, you're concerned about signatures. I'll stick to that. If I believe I need crossenv, I see it advertises kent@doddsfamily.com as the author. I look up Kent Dodds. I find various bits of information about him. I find his twitter @kentcdodds for instance. He may even have a page published @doddsfamily.com to verify his key.
If the key has been around for a while, that's probably sufficient for me. If he doesn't have such a page, I send him a polite message, "Hi Kent. I'm evaluating your software for use in my project. Can I get you to verify your key please?" and Kent is a professional, so he agrees. I send kent@doddsfamily.com an encrypted message and he sends me an encrypted reply. Done. I'm satisfied that he controls the key.
At this point... oh, wow. That's not my key! Did you say crossenv? My package is cross-env! Alert the Node authorities! There's a malicious package pretending to be mine!
Is that 100% infallible? No, but here's the great thing. Even though my verification system may not be bulletproof, others with resources like DoD or FBI are out there verifying keys. They'll go see Mr Dodds, in person, if they have to. In this way, key verification is a bit like herd immunity. And the older the key is, the more trustworthy it probably is.
People who are here arguing against this system have a few things in common. They don't propose a better system, because they don't have one. They're also a bit like anti-vaxers. They irrationally refuse to participate in such a system to everyone elses' detriment. They're a bit like congress as well. They can't just look at a working system like single payer, and copy it. They refuse to accept that this is the best available option, so they fold their arms and actively fight any attempt to implement it, as is the case on that github 4016 issue.
So now that I've maybe offended everyone, strike me down with down votes. That's the basics of how I would go about it though.
The problem is one of addressing. People want to get packages by a utf8 and natural language string, followed by a version boundary check.
If people referred to packages by their proper hash (as one does when referencing values from IPFS), then we wouldn't have this problem. If people had a public key and added a key fingerprint that would also work, but would not provide any additional verification to the code (1).
But people don't want to do this. They want to address packages by relatively simple and memorable tuples. That is the problem.
> They're also a bit like anti-vaxers. They irrationally refuse to participate in such a system to everyone elses' detriment. They're a bit like congress as well. They can't just look at a working system like single payer, and copy it.
You aren't even in Keybase. Have you personally participated in any keysigning parties? Can I find your public key details here?
I can answer yes to all 3 above questions.
> So now that I've maybe offended everyone, strike me down with down votes. That's the basics of how I would go about it though.
You haven't actually offended everyone. What you haven't done is say anything that anyone else doesn't know already. We all know how signature verification worksheet and we all have seen it's problems in real world implementations.
Please reconsider paragraphs like this.
(1) :: The thing this would do is make it arguably more secure contacting the author or maintainers of the code, although given GPG's failure to achive widespread adoption or integration in popular tooling, it seems unlikely it'll see much utility.
It's not like you'd have to write a bunch of software. Also, other mission-critical open source repos have been doing this for at least a decade, so you don't even have to invent and validate a new set of processes for this.
For me, this calls into question the reliability and quality of the whole npm infrastructure and the packages it hosts.
Also, blaming users because npm (knowingly, through willful negligence) hosts malicious packages that typo squat on legitimate packages doesn't seem appropriate to me.
All package submissions are hand-curated, which should catch typosquatters. There's a clearly laid out pattern for what package space you're allowed to use based on website or company ownership.
The system is highly automated but you have to wait to get your namespace approved. And it's not unrealistic to do this with npm, maven has somewhere over a million packages.
Yes, there is a difference, released must be digitally signed on maven. They are not on NPM, so a hacker can hijack your packages just by obtaining your npm credentials.
That's crypto 101 and you can't tell the difference?
Couldn't they 'just' steal your GPG key as well? If someone can trivially steal a strong password from you, I'd worry about key material as well.
> That's crypto 101 and you can't tell the difference?
Please reconsider sentences like these.
It is comparatively trivial to steal a strong password when it is transmitted over the internet vs local key material.
Nation states with bad certs (china has done this) can steal your password, npm can steal your password, npm can be hacked and leak passwords, npm can be subject to a NSL and forced to hand over passwords, etc, etc.
There is a big difference between passwords and keys.
Interesting framing.
> It is comparatively trivial to steal a strong password when it is transmitted over the internet vs local key material.
"Comparatively trivial?" I don't really understand this. I think you're suggesting that SSL cert attacks are easier than evil maid attacks due to this paragraph:
> Nation states with bad certs (china has done this) can steal your password, npm can steal your password, npm can be hacked and leak passwords, npm can be subject to a NSL and forced to hand over passwords, etc, etc.
Pardon me, but we're so far afield of the actual reality and the logistics that plague it that I decline to continue this conversation. If your adversary is nation states, you need a code audit (preferably several). You can't trust the signatures precisely because nation states are so well equipped to perform evil maid attacks.
It is 2017, evil maid attacks are the reality of the nation-state intelligence industry. We're seeing examples of them leaking out. They're in active use not just in a targetted mechanism, but speculatively! We have evidence intelligence agencies sell comprimised USB keys in bulk near the physical locations targets are likely to enter just to see if they can catch them in a moment of bad opsec.
Honestly this all feels like an attempt to say, "We should use GPG because it is good." Maybe it is. I'm not so sure, given the logistical reality.
But it wouldn't prevent the attack we see in the tweet above. It wouldn't make the root post of this thread correct. And I'm not sure it would accomplish what you're saying.
I'm sorry, I simply don't have time to chase this degree of abstracted hypothetical on a day old thread. I'm writing this final message here as a courtesy to those involved.
Now we can't trust any package published from China.
This is a bigger deal than a targeted evil maid. Distributed trust is better than centralized trust.
Same principle as saying, "I will make my website more reliable by adding more servers." In fact you make it less reliable by doing so, you just change the severity of the problems.
And we've seen economic mechanisms compromise signed star-shaped trust graphs. E.g., all these atom plugins with features/spyware circulating because a small handful of companies think it's a business model. That's literally just buying the property from folks and ruining it. That's a very powerful attack against a web of trust and often cheaper than the fake cert attack, which is actually something you can guard against if you feel inclined to do so.
Npm is a public internet login with a password of your choosing, probably the most insecure form of authentication there is bar doing nothing. I could be brute forcing your login credentials right now and you wouldn't even know.
Also, users are safe even if maven itself is compromised because attackers still can't validate my private key. I don't think you could say the same about npm...
NPM is such a massive package repository, it's sort of a testament to the community that these sorts of things don't happen more often.
It was typo squatting.
Name canonicalization gets you part of the way there. But unless you want to go full-on namespacing then you must realize you are fighting a pointless battle.
You cannot reasonably expect to save users from themselves in every way.
The hash naturally changes with every release. The key fingerprint doesn't. Updating your dependencies to new releases is much, much more frequent than adding a new dependency; people are willing to put more effort into the latter than the former.
> You aren't even in Keybase. Have you personally participated in any keysigning parties? Can I find your public key details here?
Keybase encourages poor practices and as such I avoid it. But I've been to keysigning parties and my key's details are published any number of places. (Since adding one more is all to the good, the fingerprint is 400A C7D2 E7A1 802A AE2C C459 B1E5 712A 6D03 3D61)
It's true that a signature is based around a component with longer lifespan than a hash. However the management and trust of that component damages this argument severely.
I am unaware of any web of trust in active use that could operate a npm scale existing today. Could you share one with me?
Is that not obvious from scrolling?
Websites, Twitter, Github, Keybase, etc..
It would be pretty hard for a bad actor to overtake the real author's entire Google-findable presence (assuming it's a reasonably popular package - why would you typosquat anything obscure).
If all you do is send an email, then you haven't really done "due diligence" in any acceptable form.
This idea that everyone will just verify with the author is insane.
It's the same way you gain trust in something in real life, by watching actual behavior of someone over time. It is just assisted by technology.
Then you can ignore the issue of email completely, because you're not basing your trust on authority of the author, but on his track record as determined by you.
I bet you'll not find many attackers who would maintain some hijacked package for a few months, before launching their attack. Original author would probably notice something fishy too, given enough time.
cross-env has had 1.3 million downloads in the last month. How many of those "hey, I am evaluating your library" emails can Dodds field?
Most node projects have hundreds of dependencies, if you include transitive dependencies. How many of those can you test?
If simple solutions worked, they'd be used.
But yeah, everyone contacing an author directly doesn't scale at all.
Is a hell of a lot closer to "vigilante justice" than the version you just said. Had you made the sane posting first (or not pretended you did the second time) I wouldn't have said anything and just upvoted in agreement.
Just so I can modify my words to avoid future misunderstanding.
I can't believe it wasn't obvious, but that's the part which implies vigilante justice.
From Wikipedia[0]:
A vigilante is a civilian or organization acting in a law enforcement capacity (or in the pursuit of self-perceived justice) without legal authority.
Doxing has a very specific meaning and it directly implies taking matters into your own hands, aka vigilante.
In the case of malicious scammers, doxxing them so they can be cut off from other code repositories seems less like "vigilante justice" and more like "a public responsibility."
> Which part of the statement implied "vilgilate justice."
To put my own 2 cents in:
Doxxing someone is generally considered an attack, at least in some internet circles. It's pretty vigilante if you ask me, especially when we've seen some pretty striking examples of doxxing gone wrong in the past.
It's absolutely an attack, but it's an "attack" of a kind that is acting to end misuse and widespread tampering. It's difficult to imagine a coherent ethical system that gives the author of malicious software an expectation of privacy as they attack other people, violating similar rights.
I'm fine sharing with law enforcement, but sharing with other service providers seems to be a slippery slope. I imagine a dev losing access to their github account because they used a shitty password on their npm account and got compromised. That would suck.
I'd much rather we invent a better UI for dealing with software dependencies, but alas.
The problem does not lie in attacking bad people, the problem is that there is a high risk that you THINK you've identified who the bad actor is but actually the person you decide to "retaliate" against had nothing to do with what was done to you. That's why we leave law enforcement to the law enforcement officials and justice to the justice system. Even they make a lot of mistakes but at least there is a process that gives a chance for the truth to be found.
But sharing info about a suspect with law enforcement is what you should do yes.
It's unfortunate that so many people don't know what the word means, because now we're redefining the word to a very specific and malicious definition that makes communication about nuances around the intersection of rights here more difficult.
> there is a high risk that you THINK you've identified who the bad actor is but actually the person you decide to "retaliate" against had nothing to do with what was done to you.
I mean, you'll know their IP address, login, email, ISP and whatnot at a minimum. If the target is a comprimised computer, notifying them is the bare minimum you should do. So I'm sort of confused what kind of final consequence you're imagining here.
I think folks just see the word "doxxing" and their pattern matching misfires.
Or maybe you're trying to weasel out of what you said and are now going for broke.
Linking once again to define words, we go to Wikipedia[0]:
> Doxing is the Internet-based practice of researching and broadcasting private or identifiable information
> Doxing may be carried out for various reasons, including to aid law enforcement, business analysis, extortion, coercion, harassment, online shaming, AND VIGILANTE JUSTICE.
(Emphasis mine)
I can see this is going to be a constructive dialogue. If I had wanted to "weasel" I would have deleted the post last night when it passed under the negative point threshold.
I have absolutely 0 moral and ethical problems with publishing any details I have on a person who is using my system to attack other users. I think in fact this is a responsible thing to do, and necessary. In this specific case, I might be careful about the timing of the disclosure to try and round up any nasty packages in other systems they might have generated.
But I'd publish it. Happily. Gleefully even. I have 0 moral or ethical obligations not to. I have a clear ethical imperative to do so.
I guess fortunately for this scammer, I don't own NPM.
I wasn't going to accuse you of being a weasel, but this is the most weasel-y thing I've ever seen.
Perhaps you can cite a history of the word, then maybe I'll trust your definition over some other.
You asked for clarification to avoid future misunderstanding and then proceed to reject our clarifications as if there's some nerd-word central authority that we're not aware of. We can't even agree on one 'x' or two.
When you're the one person in a conversation who has a totally different definition, you just might be wrong.
You're wrong. Give it up.
I've said I have 0 problems publishing their data publicly. I'm happy to own even the stronger model of doxxing you lay out. I've put a few time qualifiers on it you didn't like.
But I have no problem burning the the identity people who think they can use me or my infrastructure to defraud others. Quite the opposite.
Vilifying them online isn't reasonable. It's how you end up with harassment, death threats, swatting, people going after your job, your family, etc...
It's a really shitty thing to do.