I guess you should never use the latest versions of libraries.
Pnpm also blocks preinstall scripts by default.
> Meanwhile, the aforementioned vendors are scanning public indices as well as customer repositories for signs of compromise, and provide alerts upstream (e.g. to PyPI).
https://blog.yossarian.net/2025/11/21/We-should-all-be-using...
There's nothing wrong with pinning dependencies and only updating when you know for sure they're fixing a zero-day (as it will be public at that point).
This is why it's so important to get to know what you're actually building instead of just "vibing" all the time. Before all the AI slop of this decade we just called it being responsible.
All this would have mitigated this incident in the event that an npm install was done during the window of this update being rolled out and unpatched. The npm install would continue as normal on the last known good version and the newer vulnerable version would simply not exist on the mirror.
The solutions that are effective also involve actually doing work, as developers, library authors, and package managers. But no, we want as much "convenience" as possible, so the issues will continue.
Developers and package authors should use a lockfile, pin their dependencies, be frugal about adding dependencies, and put any dependencies they do add through a basic inspection at least, checking what dependencies they also use, their code and tests quality, etc.
Package managers should enforce namespacing for ALL packages, should improve their publishing security, and should probably have an opt-in verified program for the most important packages.
Doing these will go a long way to ameliorate these supply chain attacks