[bakkoting]

> most people use pre-built distributions (wheels) for their architecture from PyPI, so don't execute arbitrary code to install packages

Technically true, but wheels can include a `.pth` which will run arbitrary code as soon as Python is started, which is only marginally less dangerous. Recently exploited in the LiteLLM attack.

[amiga386]

That appears to be an exploitable feature of the language, not the package manager per se.

We could then add the philosophical question of asking what's the difference between:

1. Adding malicious code to a package's .pth file that's evaluated automatically on every python invocation

2. Adding malicious code to the package itself that's evaluated automatically on every python invocation _that uses that package_

Packaging systems that don't run arbitrary code when you install a package are more trustworthy than ones that do, but there's still the essential trust you have to place in all code you're installing, directly and indirectly.