peacenotwar VS es5-ext

Today, with an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, some open source maintainers have taken it upon themselves to protest the war via changes to their code that express anti-war rhetoric via messages that display when the software is run. However, one maintainer in particular took it to the next level. Brandon Nozaki Miller, published a library on GitHub named peacenotwar that simply printed an anti-war message to the computer it was run on. This package is harmless on its own, but things got interesting when he included this package as a dependency in the node-ipc module he maintains. Users who downloaded the latest version of node-ipc to a machine in Russia would be subject to complete data destruction. Miller defended the act by claiming that this is all documented publicly and that users who don’t want this installed on their machine should lock their dependencies to older versions.

apparently an NGO working in belarus got affected

From that reddit thread, here is the github issue the paste originated from.

https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar/issues/45

the repo where this issue was posted simply created a .txt file on the user's machine, doesn't wipe anything: https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar/issues/45

This headline is fucking yikes, the node package that they're talking about is fully open source and does nothing but make a text file in 3 locations. It does nothing remotely close to "wiping" computers, lmfao.

His actions destroyed over 30,000 messages & files detailing war crimes committed by Russian in Ukraine belonging an American NGO that monitors human rights infringements in eastern Europe. Cool protest, bro.

Première victime collatérale

Links to drama: https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar/issues, https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/node-ipc/issues

The package uses https://github.com/RIAEvangelist/peacenotwar to deliver the message.

But I don't understand why/how it would wipe the PC. Unless I missed something, the code from the package does not delete anything.

> This code serves as a non-destructive example of why controlling your node modules is important. It also serves as a non-violent protest against Russia's aggression that threatens the world right now.

Nah, the author knew it's would be controversial. The first sentence is there as an excuse.

Don't tell me he's a victim of the regime, when other library authors add banners about the war in Ukraine he does not like it https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/issues/116 https://github.com/mdn/content/pull/18946 and like the comments about Poland becoming “Russia Poland People's Republic” doesn't look like a victim https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/issues/116#issuecomment-1066989820 https://monosnap.com/file/zZl6PrsxPTCtI0qx9XH6AZSb19eX6t and like comments about “Ukraine hit Donetsk with Tochka-U” https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/issues/116#issuecomment-1068768522 https://monosnap.com/file/bczy9oIIMSKz48P6K4MlkttrJ5jo5C

P.S. if you open the file in a text editor, you can see the soyness in all it's glory. It's this little bitch, BTW

It's a false positive, it's just - https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext

The popular npm package es5-shim checks location on install and logs a Russian call for peace for Russian users.

Kaspersky (Russian AV) flags this file as a virus.

https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/blob/main/_postinstall.js

I noticed Kaspersky on my mac deleted a file and I saw that file was from a lib used in a work project. I got curious and looked at the file and it included an anti-war message..... I can't tell if Kaspersky deleted it by mistake thinking it's malware or if Kaspersky is being nefarious. The message is in Japanese but it just says "a file has been deleted" and lists the path. This is the file it deleted https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/blob/main/_postinstall.js

Other projects adopted non-malicious approach, where they publish anti war manifests: https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/blob/main/_postinstall.js

Yet another manifest found in es5-ext: https://github.com/medikoo/es5-ext/issues/116