This meme was brought to you by the PyPI Director of Infrastructure who accidentally hardcoded credentials - which could have resulted in compromissing the entire core Python ecosystem.

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[–] carrylex@lemmy.world 48 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

I also personally ask myself how a PyPI Admin & Director of Infrastructure can miss out on so many basic coding and security relevant aspects:

Hardcoding credentials and not using dedicated secret files, environment variable or other secret stores
For any source that you compile you have to assume that - in one way or another - it ends up in the final artifact - Apparently this was not fully understood (".pyc files containing the compiled bytecode weren't considered")
Not using a isolated build process e.g. a CI with an isolated VM or a container - This will inevitable lead to "works on my machine" scenarios
Needing the built artifact (containerimage) only locally but pushing it into a publicly available registry
Using a access token that has full admin permissions for everything, despite only requiring it to bypass rate limits
Apparently using a single access token for everything
- When you use Git locally and want to push to GitHub you need an access token. The fact that article says "the one and only GitHub access token related to my account" likely indicates that this token was at least also used for this
One of the takeaways of the article says "set aggressive expiration dates for API tokens" - This won't help much if you don't understand how to handle them properly in the first place. An attacker can still use them before they expire or simply extract updated tokens from newer artifacts.

On the other hand what went well:

When this was reported it was reacted upon within a few minutes
Some of my above points of criticism now appear to be taken into account ("Takeaways")

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 28 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This will inevitable lead to “works on my machine” scenarios

Isn’t that what Python is all about?

[–] MajorHavoc@programming.dev 4 points 4 months ago

I feel seen.

[–] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Yes kids, the only stuff in ANY repo (public or otherwise) should be source code.

If it is compiled, built, or otherwise modified by any process outside of you the developer typing in your source code editor, it needs to be excluded/ignored from being committed. No excuses. None. Nope, not even that one.

No. 👏 Excuses. 👏

[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 4 points 4 months ago

Two choices: Either the production software isn’t in the exact state the repo was when the software was built. Or I can’t get build timestamps in the software.

[–] dan@upvote.au 10 points 4 months ago

This will inevitable lead to "works on my machine" scenarios

Isn't this why Docker exists? It's "works on my machine"-as-a-service.

[–] Jayjader@jlai.lu 2 points 4 months ago

When you use Git locally and want to push to GitHub you need an access token.

I don't understand; I can push to GitHub using https creds or an ssh key without creating access tokens.