Hacker News Reader

Comment by kramerger | Hacker News Reader

This is dot-dot release with just a few minor fixes. Not sure why it's on the front page, but since I have your attention... here something I noticed just the other day:

> the go command by default downloads and authenticates modules using the Go module mirror

Maybe I'm reading this incorrectly but it sounds as google will be able to see every dependency for every project I ever work on.

This is the second time Go adds something that can be used to spy on developers. Obviously they pinky promise to not abuse it, by why does this eventually happens to every Google product?

View on HN

The Python foundation can see all the dependencies you download from PyPI, and NPM can see all the dependencies you download from NPM/Yarn. This isn't unusual for a package manager.

If you prefer, you can run your own proxy and configure the Go command to use it instead.

Private modules don't use the mirror.

Unlike the ones you mentioned, Go doesn't have a central repository. The go.mod contains references to git repositories or local folders:

https://go.dev/doc/modules/gomod-ref

Not sure why a proxy is needed.

It's needed to provide checksums for each module. It also significantly improves performance and prevents a left-pad situation.

https://go.dev/blog/module-mirror-launch

These are GIT repositories, they have their own cryptographically unique identifiers. No need to send your data to a third-party to get it confirmed.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this whole operation feels like a huge infrastructure paid by Google for something that is not needed.

> cryptographically unique

Git uses SHA1 which is pretty far from cryptographically secure. It’s unlikely that’s the sole reason for having a separate checksum database though.

Doing some searching around online, it seems like git introduced sha256 support several years ago.

Only for some local operations- git protocol still uses SHA-1 for compatibility with old clients, and existing SHA-1 objects in old repositories aren't converted.

Git history can be rewritten or deleted e.g. by the git rebase command. The mirror's checksum DB is independent and prevents your build from breaking or being altered if a dependency is manipulated or deleted.

As sibling comment notes, Git's hashes are not secure: https://shattered.it

Yeah, people complained fairly loudly about this back when it was implemented, but the Go team just completely ignored the problem.

At least they listened when people complained about the more recent "lets include telemetry in the tool chain" proposal and didn't implement that.

Ugh, more telemetry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com