> On Jun 1, 2017, at 6:20 PM, Jannis Gebauer <ja....@me.com> wrote: > >> This makes me remember >> https://hackernoon.com/building-a-botnet-on-pypi-be1ad280b8d6 >> <https://hackernoon.com/building-a-botnet-on-pypi-be1ad280b8d6> on a related >> note. > > > Yep, that’s basically the same thing. Instead of using package names of > builtins, the attacker is using a combination of popular apt/yum packages > with a mix of package names with typos. > > During development, it’s not uncommon to make mistakes like: > > pip install requirements.txt (forgot the -r) > pip install requestd (typo) > pip install tkinter (not registered) > > Or to use the wrong package manager (apt-get install python-dev vs. pip > install python-dev). > > I wonder if it would make sense to build some kind of blacklist for this. > According to the blog post there were close to 10k installs over a period of > just three days. I believe Debian is running some kind of popularity contest > for their packages which could be used to identify problematic packages. This > will be a lot of manual work, but I’d work on a list like this. > >
Folks have suggested mining the logs from PyPI looking for 404 results on ``/simple/`` to highlight common packages that are being installed which don’t yet exist, then using that data to inform a sort of automatic blacklist for new project names. Other folks have suggested that trying to use some sort of algorithm with existing names to figure out common typos is a solution. Ultimately the thing that’s missing is someone to spend the time to figure out a good solution and implement it. I will get to it eventually, but if someone feels enthused to make it happen sooner, then their contribution would be appreciated. — Donald Stufft
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