2 comments

  • 0xbadcafebee39 minutes ago
    It&#x27;s another startup sales pitch. Their argument is the entire ecosystem is screwed, but it&#x27;s okay, you can run their uber complicated toolchain in a CI pipeline and that will fix everything, by reviewing all of the code of your dependency updates. (because all the other backdoored code was never reviewed? because you&#x27;re better at reviewing upstream code than the upstream maintainers?)<p>My take is the &quot;hot take&quot; nobody likes to hear. I think you should actually follow standard security best practices. Don&#x27;t update constantly to the latest bleeding edge versions, but do update to the latest security patched versions. Do pin your versions (and SHA hashes of releases). Do keep an artifact repository. Do cryptographic verification of artifacts. Do validate every dependency you add, understand who made it, what it does. Do try to minimize your dependencies. Do review every new dependency and see what it is you&#x27;re pulling into your application and whitelist the sources and their signed keys. Do use code signing. Do use OAuth, ephemeral keys, MFA, certificates.<p>Linux distributions have been secure for a <i>long</i> time by following these practices. Even their unstable branches. If they can do it, you can do it.
    • pdonis16 minutes ago
      <i>&gt; It&#x27;s another startup sales pitch.</i><p>Exactly. And for bonus points, the first part of the article seems to be arguing for the common sense stuff you describe--but then the article suddenly pivots to &quot;use our new shiny tool instead&quot;. Huh?
  • jmclnx24 minutes ago
    &gt; The old operating model was indeed fine in a much smaller, simpler tech world,<p>The thing with the &#x27;old days&#x27; that does not happen now is developers would go out of their way to make sure new releases were API backward compatible. Now it seems anything goes. If the API changed, a new function may be created or the old function would use variable arguments to allow the older functionality.<p>With that said, providing backward compatibility seems to be hard these days due to a BOM (Bill of material&#x2F;dependencies) that make a BOM of submarine look simple.<p>That ssh&#x2F;xz issue kind of highlighted how complex things have gotten.