cli VS LavaMoat

Because sometimes I make idiotic mistakes and I really don't want that embarrassing stuff out there where people can see. I ran head first into an npm bug once when I tried to symlink the README file which resulted in the thing getting published without a README.

https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/6746

Embarrassing. And then they slapped me with a stupid 24 hour count down on top of it. I seriously hate this thing.

This is the same NPM that made a change causing the `integrity` field to go silently missing from `package-lock.json` [0] when installing packages, and then also not complaining at any other time in the future.

[0] https://github.com/npm/cli/issues/4460

Node.js v21 includes npm v10.2.0, which notably introduces a new sbom command that allows you to generate a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) for the current project. You can read more about the changes in recent NPM releases on GitHub.

npm ERR! This is an error with npm itself. Please report this error at: npm ERR! https://github.com/npm/cli/issues

You'll need an AWS account and AWS credentials configured locally. We'll use pnpm but you could also use npm or yarn. The finished app is available on github.

~/Documents/amplify-hackathon/amplify-react-graphql-demo main !5 ?3  npm install -g @aws-amplify/cli  1 ✘ 4s 22:11:35 changed 26 packages in 25s 7 packages are looking for funding run `npm fund` for details npm notice npm notice New minor version of npm available! 9.4.0 -> 9.6.5 npm notice Changelog: https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v9.6.5 npm notice Run npm install -g [email protected] to update! npm notice

10 18.95 npm notice Changelog: https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v9.6.4

npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: See https://github.com/lydell/source-map-resolve#deprecated npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: This SVGO version is no longer supported. Upgrade to v2.x.x. added 1692 packages, and audited 1699 packages in 23s 211 packages are looking for funding run `npm fund` for details 27 vulnerabilities (1 low, 7 moderate, 18 high, 1 critical) To address issues that do not require attention, run: npm audit fix To address all issues (including breaking changes), run: npm audit fix --force Run `npm audit` for details. npm notice npm notice New minor version of npm available! 9.5.1 -> 9.6.2 npm notice Changelog: https://github.com/npm/cli/releases/tag/v9.6.2 npm notice Run npm install -g [email protected] to update! npm notice

Just yesterday I watched a talk [0] at WarsawJS about LavaMoat [1], a set of tools to protect against malicious behaviour from npm dependencies. Guess it’s time to look into it deeper.

[0]: https://naugtur.pl/pres3/lava/2023end.html

[1]: https://github.com/LavaMoat/LavaMoat

You are basically talking about Lavamoat. It provides tooling and policies for SES, which aims to make it into standards.

https://github.com/LavaMoat/LavaMoat

Enter: lavamoat. https://github.com/LavaMoat/LavaMoat

You should check out Lavamoat: https://github.com/LavaMoat/LavaMoat

It attempts to do what you're essentially describing. It was built by the MetaMask team, where supply chain attacks are an obviously huge risk.

I've spent some time trying to get it working in an app, but haven't been able to get it all the way working. It's still pretty beta and not well documented.

And it is happening right now. Github is opening the GitHub Advisory Database to community submissions. Awesome community NodeSecure builds cool things like scanner and js-x-ray. There are also lockfile-lint, LavaMoat, Jfrog-npm-tools (and I am sure there is more).

There is a proposal to add OCAPs on a language level in TC39[0]. There is already a drop-in implementation which already works in both Nodejs and browsers[1].

As a developer who wants to sandbox your own (recursive) dependencies, this is made accessible today in Lavamoat[2]. Basically a package or app can provide a policy manifest specifying which capabilities (e.g. network or filesystem access) should be granted for each dependency. Also comes with a tool that will auto-generate a starting point from your existing dependency tree.

IMO this is the future. Currently it does come with a performance penalty but hopefully this idea will catch on and make it into runtime implementations.

Lavamoat is still marked as "preprod" on npm but talking to the author it's a matter of days or weeks until the first stable release.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30703817

[1]: https://github.com/endojs/endo/tree/master/packages/ses

[2]: https://github.com/LavaMoat/LavaMoat