warehouse VS packj

pip install PackageName: installs a package (you can browse the available packages in the Python Package Index)

python3 -m pip install \ --trusted-host test.pypi.org --trusted-host test-files.pythonhosted.org \ --index-url https://test.pypi.org/simple/ \ --extra-index-url https://pypi.org/simple/ \ piper_whistle==$(python3 -m src.piper_whistle.version)

In my experience so far, I can use a vast amount of the Python Standard Library to build Wasm-powered serverless applications. The caveat I currently understand is that Python’s implementation of TCP and UDP sockets, as well as Python libraries that use threads, processes, and signal handling behind the scenes, will not compile to Wasm. It is worth noting that a similar caveat exists with libraries that I find on The Python Package Index (PyPI) site. While these caveats might limit what can be compiled to Wasm, there are still a ton of extremely powerful libraries to leverage.

We believe that poetry is currently the best tool for this purpose, besides of being the most popular one at the moment. This is why we will use poetry to manage the dependencies of our project throughout this series of posts. Poetry allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on, and it will manage (install/update) them for you. Poetry also allows you to package your project into a distributable format and publish it to a repository, such as PyPI. We strongly recommend you to learn more about this tool by reading the official documentation.

From there, I needed to learn a bit about PyPi or Python Package Index, which is the home for all the wonderful packages that you know if you have ever run the handy pip install command. PyPi has a pretty quick and easy onboarding, which requires a secured account be created and, for the purposes of submitting packages from CLI, an API token be generated. This can be done in your PyPi profile. Once logg just navigate to https://pypi.org/manage/account/ and scroll down to the API tokens section. Click “Add Token” and follow the few steps to generate an API token which is your access point to uploading packages. With all this in place, I was able to use twine to handle the package upload. First I needed to install twine, again as simple as pip install twine. In order for twine to access my API token during the package upload process, it needed to read it from .pypirc file that contains the token info. For some that file may exist already, for me I was required to create it. Working in windows I simply used a text editor to create it in my home user directory ($HOME/.pypirc). The file contents had a TOML like format looked like this:

I have published the package to Python Package Index, commonly called PyPi, and in this post, I'll be sharing the steps I had to follow in the process.

Register at PyPI.org

According to the stats on the original link, there are over 25,000 identified secret ids/keys/tokens in the data. And it looks like that's just identifiable secrets, e.g. "Google API Keys" that I'm guessing are identifiable because they have a specific pattern, and may be missing other secrets that use less recognizable patterns.

I mean, sure, compared to the 478,876 Projects claimed on https://pypi.org/, that's a pretty small minority. On the other hand, I'd guess a many Python packages don't use these particular services, or even need to connect to a remote service at all, so the area for this class of mistake should be even smaller.

And mistakes do happen, but that's a pretty big thing to miss if you are knowingly publishing your code with the expectation other people will be reading it.

PyPi package

Does pypi.org display the Union of all keywords, the keywords of the most recent release, the keywords of the first release or some other weird combination like the intersection?

Creator of Packj [1] here. How do you envision sandboxing/security policies will be specified? Per-lib policies when you've hundreds of dependencies will become overwhelming. Having built an eBPF-based sandbox [2], I anticipate that accuracy will be another challenge here: too restrictive will block functionality, too permissive defeats the purpose.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious/risky NPM/PyPI/RubyGems/Rust/Maven/PHP packages by carrying out static+dynamic+metadata analysis.

Cool project. How do you feel about projects like OpenSSF scorecards or even the checks that socket.dev do today on these packages to help determine risk?

https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj/blob/main/.packj.yaml

Secondly, what about impersonation where attackers imitate a popular package and its respective metadata?

I built Packj [1] sandboxing for securing “pip/NPM install”. It uses strace for sandboxing and blocks access to sensitive files and limits traffic to known-good IP addresses.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj

Great work! This provenance check is going to be very valuable for enforcing supply-chain security. We are working on adding support to check for provenance in Packj.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags risky/malicious NPM/PyPI/Ruby dependencies

Cool project. Would love to integrate this in Packj [1] as one of the open-source SAST scanners. Will DM you.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious/risky open-source dependencies.

Very cool! I've built something similar, but for packages: https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj Would love to talk.

Working on a marketplace (based on Packj [1]) to allow open-source developers to make money by selling "assured" software artifacts.

1. Packj https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious and other "risky" open-source dependencies in your software supply chain.

I’ve created Packj sandbox [1] for “safe installation” of PyPI/NPM/Rubygems packages

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj

It DOES NOT require a VM/Container; uses strace. It shows you a preview of file system changes that installation will make and can also block arbitrary network communication during installation (uses an allow-list).

Great to see a developer-friendly tool around OSV! Packj [1] uses OSV APIs to report vulnerable PyPI/NPM/Rubygems packages. Disclaimer: I built it.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious/risky packages.