[chha]

Linus doesn't have root access to our systems for several reasons. One of them is the fact that we get the actual source code, and not just a compiled blob doing "something". Another is the fact that they have at least some level of reviews wrt who can commit code, although this isn't perfect as the case with the University of Minnesota proved.

Npm on the other hand is much, much worse. Anyone can publish anything they want, and they can point to any random source code repository claiming that this is the source. If we look at how often vulnerable packages are discovered in eg. npm, I'd argue that the current level of trust and quality aren't sustainable, partly due to the potentially huge number of direct and transitive dependencies a project may have.

Unless you start to review the actual component you have no way to verify this, and unlike the Linux kernel there is no promise that anyone has ever reviewed the package you download. You can of course add free tools such as the OWASP Dependency Check, but these will typically lag a bit behind as they rely on published vulnerabilities. Other tools such as the Sonatype Nexus platform is more proactive, but can be expensive.

[elevader]

Maybe this is arguing semantics but unless you run something like Gentoo you will most likely get the linux kernel as a binary blob contained in a package your distribution provides. There isn't really any guarantee that this will actually contain untampered linux kernel sources (and in case of something like RHEL it most likely doesn't because of backports) unless you audit it, which most people won't do (and maybe can't do). So, in princpile at least, this isn't really that much better than the node_modules situation. Security and trust are hard issues and piling on 100s of random js dependencies sure doesn't help but you either build everything yourself or you need to trust somebody at some point.

[chha]

It depends on how you look at it. If I'm running Debian, I have decided to trust their sources and their process, regardless of how their software is being delivered. That process and the implementation of it is the basis for my trust. If I'm really paranoid, I can even attempt to reproduce the builds to verify that nothing has changed between the source and the binary blob.[1]

For npm, trust isn't really a concept. The repository is just a channel used to publish packages, they don't accept any responsibility for anything published, which is fair considering they allow anyone to publish for free. There are no mechanisms in npm that can help you verify the origin of a package and point to a publicly available source code repository or that ensures that the account owner was actually the person who published the package.

Security and trust is very hard, but my point here is that npm does nothing to facilitate either, making it very difficult for the average developer to be aware of any issues. The one tool you get with npm is...not really working the way it was supposed to.[2]

1 - https://reproducible-builds.org/ 2 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27761334

[elevader]

I 100% agree and I kind of wonder why this doesn't seem to be a problem with similar repositories like maven. That doesn't seem to hit HN every 1-2 weeks with a new security flaw/compromised package so they seem to be doing something right, whatever that may be.

[chha]

It's likely to be a combination of several things. Npm is trendy and has a low threshold for getting started, plus the fact that adding eg. bitcoin miners to a website is a nice way to decentralize and ramp up mining capacity.

Maven on the other hand define several requirements, such as all files in a package being signed, more metadata and they also provide free tools the developers can use to improve the quality of a package.

[ptx]

You do need to trust somebody (such as your Linux distribution of choice) but with NPM you're trusting thousands of somebodies and your system's security depends directly on all of them being secure and trustworthy.

[elevader]

Yeah, that is true. And npm as a whole doesn't really have a good track record in being worthy of a lot of trust.