[XYen0n]

If everyone avoids using packages released within the last 7 days, malicious code is more likely to remain dormant for 7 days.

[otterley]

What do you base that on? Threat researchers (and their automated agents) will still keep analyzing new releases as soon as they’re published.

[mike_hearn]

Their analysis was triggered by open source projects upgrading en-masse and revealing a new anomalous endpoint, so, it does require some pioneers to take the arrows. They didn't spot the problem entirely via static analysis, although with hindsight they could have done (missing GitHub attestation).

[narrator]

A security company could set up a honeypot machine that installs new releases of everything automatically and have a separate machine scan its network traffic for suspicious outbound connections.

[mike_hearn]

The problem is what counts as suspicious. StepSecurity are quite clear in their post that they decide what counts as anomalous by comparing lots of open source runs against prior data, so they can't figure it out on their own.

[PunchyHamster]

The fact threat researchers and especially their automated agents are not all that good at their jobs

[zwily]

Those threat researchers and their autonomous agents caught this axios release.

[staticassertion]

> What do you base that on?

The entire history of malware lol

[otterley]

Can you elaborate? Why do you believe that motivated threat hunters won’t continue to analyze and find threats in new versions of open source software in the first week after release?

[staticassertion]

Attackers going "low and slow" when they know they're being monitored is just standard practice.

> Why do you believe that motivated threat hunters won’t continue to analyze and find threats in new versions of open source software in the first week after release?

I'm sure they will, but attackers will adapt. And I'm really unconvinced that these delays are really going to help in the real world. Imagine you rely on `popular-dependency` and it gets compromised. You have a cooldown, but I, the attacker, issue "CVE-1234" for `popular-dependency`. If you're at a company you now likely have a compliance obligation to patch that CVE within a strict timeline. I can very, very easily pressure you into this sort of thing.

I'm just unconvinced by the whole idea. It's fine, more time is nice, but it's not a good solution imo.

[otterley]

What, in your view, is a better solution?

[staticassertion]

There are many options. Here's a post just briefly listing a few of the ones that would be handled by package managers and registries, but there are also many things that would be best done in CI pipelines as well.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47586241

[cozzyd]

that's why people are telling others to use 7 days but using 8 days themselves :)

[wongarsu]

brb, switching everything to 9 days

[johnisgood]

That is 3D chess level type shit. xD

[MetaWhirledPeas]

You don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the other guy.

[porridgeraisin]

Genius

[jmward01]

I suspect most packages will keep a mix of people at 7 days and those with no limit. That being said, adding jitter by default would be good to these features.

[Barbing]

>adding jitter by default would be good

This became evident, what, perhaps a few years ago? Probably since childhood for some users here but just wondering what the holdup is. Lots of bad press could be avoided, or at least a little.

[DimmieMan]

They’re usually picked up by scanners by then.

[bakugo]

> If everyone avoids using packages released within the last 7 days

Which will never even come close to happening, unless npm decides to make it the default, which they won't.

[Aurornis]

Most people won’t.

7 days gives ample time for security scanning, too.

[3abiton]

This highly depends on the detection mechanism.