Navigating the Dangers of Typo-Squatting in Open Source Libraries

This week we’re joined by the “mad scientist” himself, Feross Aboukhadijeh…and we’re talking about the launch of Socket — the next big thing in the fight to secure and protect the open source supply chain.

While working on the frontlines of open source, Feross and team have witnessed firsthand how supply chain attacks have swept across the software community and have damaged the trust in open source. Socket turns the problem of securing open source software on its head, and asks…“What if we assume all open source may be malicious?” So, they built a system that proactively detects indicators of compromised open source packages and brings awareness to teams in real-time. We cover the whys, the hows, and what’s next for this ambitious and very much needed project.

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Featuring:

• Feross Aboukhadijeh – Website, GitHub, X
• Adam Stacoviak – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X
• Jerod Santo – GitHub, LinkedIn, Mastodon, X

Show Notes:

• Socket.dev
• socket.dev/npm/issue
• socket.dev/npm/lists/removed
• socket.dev/npm/package/left-pad
• socket.dev/npm/package/umbrellajs
• socket.dev/npm/package/airbnb-fejax
• Dev corrupts NPM libs ‘colors’ and ‘faker’ breaking thousands of apps
• Popular ‘coa’ NPM library hijacked to steal user passwords
• Popular NPM package UA-Parser-JS poisoned with cryptomining, password-stealing malware
• Vulnerabilities in NPM allowed threat actors to publish new version of any package
• cve.org
• browserslist.dev
• The Changelog #227: Mad science, WebTorrent, WebRTC with Feross Aboukhadijeh
• The Changelog #326: The insider perspective on the event-stream compromise with Dominic Tarr
• JS Party #185: Into the Wormhole with Feross Aboukhadijeh
• JS Party #210: What’s in your package.json? with Tobie Langel

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!