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Comment by XYen0n

25 days ago

If everyone avoids using packages released within the last 7 days, malicious code is more likely to remain dormant for 7 days.

What do you base that on? Threat researchers (and their automated agents) will still keep analyzing new releases as soon as they’re published.

  • Their analysis was triggered by open source projects upgrading en-masse and revealing a new anomalous endpoint, so, it does require some pioneers to take the arrows. They didn't spot the problem entirely via static analysis, although with hindsight they could have done (missing GitHub attestation).

    • A security company could set up a honeypot machine that installs new releases of everything automatically and have a separate machine scan its network traffic for suspicious outbound connections.

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I suspect most packages will keep a mix of people at 7 days and those with no limit. That being said, adding jitter by default would be good to these features.

  • >adding jitter by default would be good

    This became evident, what, perhaps a few years ago? Probably since childhood for some users here but just wondering what the holdup is. Lots of bad press could be avoided, or at least a little.

> If everyone avoids using packages released within the last 7 days

Which will never even come close to happening, unless npm decides to make it the default, which they won't.

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  • But wouldn't the type of people that notifes anomalous network activity be exactly the type of people who add a 7 day delay because they're security conscious?

    • And I’ll bet a chunk of already-compromised vibe coders are feeling really on-top-of-shit because they just put that in their config, locking in that compromised version for a week.