Security
Getting rid of
NPM scripts

In 2016, Sam Saccone discovered a vulnerability that allows adversaries to run arbitrary scripts when installing an NPM package of theirs. As mitigation, NPM co-founder Laurie Voss suggests:

• Option 1: adding --ignore-scripts when running npm install
• Option 2: permanently adding ignore-scripts=true to .npmrc

UI Drafter uses the latter because it avoids having to remember the flag everytime. But that option disables NPM "scripts". Therefore, we end up with two alternatives:

• Option A: overriding: npm run --ignore-scripts=false test
• Option B: using a shell script as follows, or a Makefile

#!/bin/sh

case $1 in
  dev)    ./make-dev.js ;;
  test)   mocha "src/**/*.test.js" ;;
  lint)   eslint src ;;
  slint)  stylelint "src/**/*.css" ;;

  prod)   time ./make-production.js ;;
  all)    $0 test && $0 lint && $0 slint && $0 prod ;;

  *)      echo "Invalid task $1" >&2; exit 1 ;;
esac

Which can be ran as:

$ ./make test

If the package is not globally installed, prefix the path:

lint) node_modules/.bin/eslint src ;;

Overriding at installation

If you need to install packages that install binary dependencies, or rely on running an NPM script, temporarily override the mitigation:

$ npm install --ignore-scripts=false package-i-trust

EDIT: (Dec/27/2020) As suggested in the Hacker News thread:

dev:
	./make-dev.js
test:
	mocha "src/**/*.test.js"
lint:
	eslint src
slint:
	stylelint "src/**/*.css"

prod:
	sh -c "time ./make-production.js"

all: test lint slint prod

.PHONY: dev test lint slint prod all

$ make test