• db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    3 months ago

    You’d be surprised how well someone who wants to can camouflage their package to look legit.

    • RustyNova@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      True. You can’t always be 100% sure. But a quick check for download counts/version count can help. And while searching for it in the repo, you can see other similarly named packages and prevent getting hit by a typo squatter.

      Despite, it’s not just for security. What if the package you’re installing has a big banner in the readme that says “Deprecated and full of security issues”? It’s not a bad package per say, but still something you need to know

    • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, I’m confused on what the intent of the comment was. Apart from a code review, I don’t understand how someone would be able to tell that a package is fake. Unless they are grabbing it from a. Place with reviews/comments to warn them off.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        the first most obvious sign is multiple indentical packages, appearing to be the same thing, with weird stats and figures.

        And possibly weird sizes. Usually people don’t try hard on package managing software, unless it’s an OS for some reason.

        • KairuByte@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          Unless you’re cross checking every package, you’re not going to know that there are multiple packages. And a real package doesn’t necessarily give detailed information on what it does, meaning you can easily mistake real packages as fake when using this as a test.

          The real answer is to not trust AI outputs, but there is no perfect answer to this since those fake packages can easily be put up and sound like real ones with a cursory check.

          • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            3 months ago

            depends on how you integrate it i suppose. A system that abstracts that is pretty awful.

            At the very least, you should be weary of there being more than one package, without explicit reason for such.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      we just experienced this with LZMA on debian according to recent reports. 2 years of either manufactured dev history, or one very, very weird episode.