alt Hacker NewsDefence in depth is not just 'throw anything in that might improve security' though. The idea is to have multiple strong layers, not a hundred half-measures that are all easily bypassed. A stronger layer might be sandboxing, or separating your build and publishing steps as others have suggested (and also probably worth restricting the credentials the publishing step to just the relevant packages as well). These will at least robustly prevent a malicious dependency from spreading horizontally, but you'll still potentially ship malware to your customers.
Replies
woodruffw • yesterday at 6:17 PM
I would consider 2FA and signing to be strong layers, when applied well. I think everybody agrees we shouldn’t add layers just for the sake of it.
>The idea is to have multiple strong layers, not a hundred half-measures that are all easily bypassed
Definitely. On the other hand, in my opinion, "not running arbitrary code during package install" is not a "half-measure", it's a basic sanity. This whole arbitrary code execution at install time is a convenience feature that was adapted by some package managers, but it was never a good idea.
Fortunately, nixos solves that for me in most cases.