I don't see what the fuss is about. This all looks pretty standard. I use random people's stuff all the time. Isn't that the point of open source?
Did you find something malicious in the random GitHub repo? If so, you should write an article about that instead.
Using somebody's stuff is different than hot-linking directly to a hosted version of it, even just from the perspective that dude could delete it at any time and break the whole app.
That's fair. I download and embed, personally. Still, it's not a rant worthy mistake, honestly. Suggest a better approach, sure.
It's definitely a rant worthy mistake because this would literally never happen in any professional app anywhere. This is a supply chain risk.
Microsoft? Okta? JetBrains? If these are amateurs, who is a professional developer?
https://www.encryptionconsulting.com/top-10-supply-chain-att...
Are you aware that common libraries like Bootstrap, FontAwesome, and HTMX walk developers through linking to their CDNs directly? In fact, FontAwesome reommends it for CDN perfromance.
I think you're dangerously mistaken if you believe that it "literally never" happens. It literally does happen all the damned time. And, for your own safety and others', you should assume that when you use any app for which you don't have the source code.
I don't know if you're being serious or not, but in case you are: There is a difference between (re)using other people's open sourced code, hopefully reviewed, and giving anyone in control of the third party repository the ability to run arbitrary code on your user's devices. Even if the "random GitHub repo" doesn't contain any malicious code right now, it may well contain some tomorrow.
Completely agree. This is really unique. Can you imagine if it were standard practice to be open to supply chain attacks like that, by blindly relying on hotlinked or unpinned dependencies?
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It's always a better idea to make a local copy of it.
Imagine they're downloading a project directly from your GitHub account. Even if you're not doing anything malicious and have no intention of doing anything malicious even after you've been aware of this, now all of a sudden your GitHub account / email is a huge target for anyone that wants to do something malicious.
All good for you to make those choices for yourself. Your response seems to be show ignorance of all the recent supply chain attacks that have occurred. You can imagine that given the situation with the shoe gifts that many high up members of the administration and cabinet members are running this app.
I'm critical of the author.
I'm well aware of supply chain attacks. But this isn't a supply chain attack. If it were, the article would be way more interesting.
The supply chain attack articles are interesting exactly because this is so common. So what's special here other than it being loosely related to a disliked political figure? HN isn't supposed to be an especially political website.
"A common app is doing the same thing that basically every other app is doing."
Is that a good headline? No. And this isn't a good article.
The dependencies weren't vendored, meaning their behavior can change at any time if a malicious actor gains control of that third-party repo.
This is bad for security.
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