Comment by dec0dedab0de
2 days ago
github, pypi, npm, homebrew, cpan, etc etc. should adopt a multi-multi-factor authentication approach for releases. Maybe have it kick in as a requirement after X amount of monthly downloads.
Basically, have all releases require multi-factor auth from more than one person before they go live.
A single person being compromised either technically, or by being hit on the head with a wrench, should not be able to release something malicious that effects so many people.
And how would that work for single maintainer projects?
They would have to find someone else if they grew too big.
Though, the secondary doesn't necessarily have to be a maintainer or even a contributor on the project. It just needs to be someone else to do a sanity check, to make sure it is an actual release.
Heck, I would even say that as the project grows in popularity, the amount of people required to approve a release should go up.
So if I'm developing something I want to use and the community finds it useful but I take no contributions and no feature requests I should have to find another person to deal with?
How do I even know who to trust, and what prevents two people from conspiring together with a long con? Sounds great on the surface but I'm not sure you've thought it through.
3 replies →
I really hoped PyPI's required switch to 2-factor auth would require reauthorization to publish packages. But no, they went with "trusted publishing" (i.e., publishing is triggered by CI, and will happily publish a compromized repo). Trusted publishing would only have been a minor hindrance to the litellm exploit. Since they acquired an account's personal access token, the exploit could have been committed to the repo and the package published.