rfcs VS SES-shim

npm workspaces plus Wireit works far better than Lerna, in my experience.

https://github.com/google/wireit

Wireit's ability to specify actual script dependencies, do caching (and on Github actions), and it's long-running service script support make it much more useful and comprehensive than Lerna.

I agree that this should be built into npm. There's an RRFC for it here: https://github.com/npm/rfcs/issues/706

It's coming https://github.com/npm/rfcs/blob/main/accepted/0042-isolated-mode.md

This just got accepted as a proposal in NPM: https://github.com/npm/rfcs/pull/626

npm also plans to support pnpm-style node_modules

(I usually end up removing npm ci from CI/CD since I think it is way too slow and want to cache node_modules from previous builds; I'm waiting for https://github.com/npm/rfcs/issues/415 to land to make this fail-safe npm install --from-lockfile. Yarn does support this already)

I started following this problem from the discussion at npm about making install scripts opt-in. But install scripts are not the only threat, there are more ways for malicious actors:

I used E in the 90s: http://erights.org/

I haven't kept up with newer systems but I've heard of https://github.com/endojs/endo and just came across http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/home/anon/isr2017... (which says "in the style of the E programming language" -- that's as far as I've read) while looking that up.

WebAssembly was designed to follow the same capability security principles. CHERI too as someone else just brought up.

There are other potential solutions I haven’t explored close enough (like Endo and SES), or completely omitted as they’re based on an imperfect blacklist-based approach to security (like sandboxed WebWorkers). However, the mentioned 4 solutions are the top contenders, at least in my mind.

I don't know why you are being silently downvoted, as I think it is worth talking about the potential of using static analysis to improve things.

One promising approach is Endo[0] which "uses LavaMoat to automatically generate reviewable policies that determine what capabilities will be distributed to third party dependencies."

[0] https://github.com/endojs/endo

Agoric moved forward and Realms gave way to SES

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

And Endo is a set of tools (being) built around it to make it more practical for particular usecases

Yea you could restrict the app by whitelisting only the network services and folders that it will use and that's pretty valuable though at least on Linux could already easily be achieved otherwise. It's good that Deno makes it easy but let's be honest, most people will just pass -A.

I'd love to see a permissions system on a library basis. It would ask the first time a dependency is added and when a new permission is requested after an update. Javascript doesn't make that easy though by being so dynamic. SES could maybe help: https://github.com/endojs/endo/blob/master/packages/ses/READ...

I was poking around on the internet a bit earlier and I found this project. It looks pretty cool, and I figured perhaps a few of y'all might find it cool too!

I have no idea if it actually sandboxes networking by default. This other project, endo[0], seems to add some of that functionality.

Regardless of the maturity though, it makes me excited to see this type of work getting done now!

(What made me want to research it was this[1] thread from the other day.)

0: https://github.com/endojs/endo

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30215212

Fortunately the problem could become more tractable if something like SES / Endo takes off:

"Endo protects program integrity both in-process and in distributed systems. SES protects local integrity, defending an application against supply chain attacks: hacks that enter through upgrades to third-party dependencies. Endo does this by encouraging the Principle of Least Authority. ... Endo uses LavaMoat to automatically generate reviewable policies that determine what capabilities will be distributed to third party dependencies."

https://github.com/endojs/endo

Yeah. JavaScript is probably the closest to being there (with things like SES[0], LavaMoat[1], etc.) but we're not quite there yet. It's just shocking that this sort of thing is as seemingly obscure as it is; it's like the whole industry has collectively thrown up their hands and said code execution is unavoidably radioactively dangerous. (While simultaneously using package managers that... well.) But it doesn't have to be!

[0] https://github.com/Agoric/ses-shim

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