What do you mean? You can drop into bash in a container and run any arbitrary command, so `npm install foo` works just fine. Why would posthog's SDK be a special case?

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LeifCarrotson an hour ago | parent [-]

I think the issue is more about what else has to go into or be connected to that container. Posthog isn't really useful if it's air-gapped. You're going to give it keys to access all kinds of juicy databases and analytics, and those NPM tokens, AWS/GCP/Azure credentials, and environment variables are exactly what it exfiltrates.

I don't run much on the root OS of my dev machine, basically everything is in a container or VM of some kind, but that's more so that I can reproduce my environment by copying a VMDK than in an effort to limit what the container can do to itself and data it has access to. Yeah, even with root access to a VM guest, an attacker they won't get my password manager, personal credit card, socials, etc. that I only use from the host OS... But they'll get everything that the container contains or has access to, which is often a lot of data!

	▲	Lutger 40 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You're severely limiting the blast radius. This malware works by exfiltrating secrets during installation, if I understood it correctly. If you would properly containerize your app and limit permissions to what is absolutely required, you could be compromised and still suffer little to no consequences. Of course, this is not a real defense on its own, its just good practice to limit blast radius, much like not giving everybody admin rights.
	▲	amazingman 19 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Sure, but only the container is affected and it is always your responsibility to grant as little access as possible to the various credentials you may need to supply that environment. AFAICT with this worm, if you don't supply write-level GitHub credentials to the container (and you shouldn't!) and you install infected packages, the exploit goes no further.