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Comment by pas | Hacker News Reader

2FA was mandated by npm

they had 2FA, but likely software TOTP (so it was either autofilled via 1password (or similar), or they were able to steal the seed)

at this point I think publishing an npm app and asking people to scan a QR with it is the easiest way (so people don't end up with 1 actual factor)

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What they need to mandate is hardware anchored passkeys/fido2/webauthn for both auth and package signing, with the -option- to sign with PGP for those that have well trusted PGP keys.

They won't do this, I have talked to them plenty of times about it. But, if they did, the supply chain attacks would almost entirely stop.

Don't need to require hardware 2fa tokens. Just a mobile app would be sufficient. Publish to a staging area then require confirmation on mobile to make it go live. Maybe include a diff of changes files for good measure.

And even a mobile app (or, in fact, any single-person 2FA) would be unnecessary if we had a requirement for another live person to approve the release. As a bonus, a two-maintainers-required setup would also improve resilience against one of them going rogue or getting tortured.

So you think the answer is replacing a requirement for a 6-digit 2FA code that can be typed into the npm publishing CLI with a requirement for a device that has a camera that can scan a QR code and then... what? What does the QR code do on the device? How does the npm CLI present the QR code?

Simply supporting passkeys gives people domain locked login via qr/phone, or any fido2 usb device. No more keyboard entry required for login other than username, which means phishing is off the table. Standards are great if we can get anyone to use them.

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