This article delves into the rationale behind GitHub’s implementation of npm package provenance and how it bolsters security and confidence in the npm ecosystem.
Key Takeaways:
Introducing GitHub’s latest innovation – npm package provenance.
This advancement empowers developers to authenticate the link between npm packages and their associated source repositories and build instructions.
Using GitHub Actions and integrating the –provenance flag, developers can now publish provenance data alongside their packages.
This information provides users with a verifiable means to trace packages back to their roots, ensuring the use of trustworthy software.
As the largest package registry worldwide is hosted by GitHub, the company continually explores ways to enhance security, thereby maintaining a robust npm ecosystem.
A crucial aspect of this responsibility involves fostering trust in open-source projects that everyone depends on.
Consequently, GitHub is dedicated to equipping developers with the necessary tools to safeguard the integrity of their software supply chains.
Consider this – you wouldn’t pick up an unknown flash drive off the street and insert it into your computer.
Similarly, developers often select packages from the npm registry and incorporate them into their applications without much consideration.
To reinforce trust in npm packages, it is crucial to offer visibility into the process by which source code is converted into published artifacts.
The community requires a means to directly trace an npm package back to the precise source code commit it was derived from.
The Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA) specification was developed for this purpose.
The SLSA provenance schema allows developers to comprehend how a published package emerged from its source.
GitHub’s objective is to build trust in the source code and the build process, rather than relying on individual package maintainers to sign them.
By mandating packages to be constructed on a trustworthy CI/CD platform, visibility is granted into the specific commit that initiated the build and the instructions employed to publish the final artifact.
With this information, the auditability of the build is improved, making any attempt to interfere with the code significantly more noticeable.
Furthermore, the OpenID Connect token can be utilized to identify the CI environment and job, and a cryptographic signature can be applied to the provenance statement.
This guarantees the data’s authenticity, enabling users of the package to confirm it.
Generating evidence of a package’s origin is only one aspect of guaranteeing its trustworthiness.
The other component is ensuring that people can verify that the evidence came from a dependable source.
To achieve this, the evidence is uploaded to a service called Rekor, a public and secure log that prohibits any alterations to the evidence.
This means that if anyone attempts to modify the evidence later, it will be detected.
Once the evidence is uploaded to Rekor, it is also sent to the npm registry with the package. The registry confirms the evidence’s legitimacy before accepting the package.
If a package has evidence of its origin, it will be marked with a badge on the npmjs.com website.
Developers can also utilize the npm command-line tool to verify that the evidence is valid for packages they have installed.
As GitHub endeavors to make npm package provenance broadly accessible, the company is concentrating on numerous enhancements , including:
Addressing intentional supply chain attacks is a challenge that GitHub cannot overcome alone. As a founding member of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and an active participant in the working group for securing software repositories, GitHub aims to extend similar capabilities to other platforms and package ecosystems.
By collaborating as an industry, we can rally around these efforts to secure the open-source supply chain.
GitHub’s innovative npm package provenance feature is a crucial step towards improving security and trust within the npm ecosystem.
By offering a verifiable method to link packages to their source repositories and build instructions, developers can preserve the integrity of their software supply chains and protect against potential attacks.
As part of the OpenSSF, GitHub continues to cooperate with other platforms and package ecosystems to work towards a more secure open-source supply chain.
