Patching Problems with Persnickety Proxies Purveyed by Paternalistic Princes

Fallthrough

A recent Ars Technica article outlined a backdoor in the Go Module Mirror. Even though it's framed as a backdoor, and potentially a vulnerability, it's actually an exploit of a design choice designers of the module mirror made. Kris is joined by Matthew, Dylan, and guest host Jamie Tanna, to discuss this vulnerability-but-actually-feature, the implications for the Go community, and the wider reasons why something like this happened. We go on a journey through the history of modules, the Go community, and a whole lot more. We know this is a long one but we're sure you'll love it! Have thoughts? Reach out to us on social media and let us hear them!

Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!

Notes & Links:

• Go Module Mirror served backdoor to devs for 3+ years
• Go Supply Chain Attack: Malicious Package Exploits Go Module Proxy Caching for Persistence
• Abusing Go's infrastructure (from 8:38)
• #66653: x/pkgsite: links can point at source code that may not match what is served by the module proxy
• openapi.tanna.dev/go/validator (from 22:15)
• #44550: proposal: cmd/go: make major versions optional in import paths (from 1:15:56)
  • Comment from above
• SourceHut will (not) blacklist the Go module mirror (from 9:19)

Chapters:

• (00:05) - Intro
• (01:38) - Introducing Jamie Tanna
• (02:21) - The vulnerability that's actually a feature
• (04:53) - The Go Module Mirror
• (14:02) - Paternalism
• (21:14) - What are vanity URLs?
• (23:02) - Not just the official Go Module Mirror
• (27:58) - Unforgiving Module Proxies
• (29:23) - #BringBackGOPATH
• (29:36) - Tags are mutable
• (33:44) - What does a version mean?
• (35:10) - Jamie's Hot Take
• (38:20) - The Trails and Tribulations of Modules
• (42:03) - It's humans!
• (44:40) - How might we fix this?
• (49:12) - Is it too easy to fetch dependencies?
• (52:25) - Decentralized versus Centralized
• (57:24) - A Proxy is not an Origin
• (01:03:14) - Can we revalidate?
• (01:05:14) - I can't believe it's not SemVer!
• (01:06:34) - Analogy Time, featuring The Web!
• (01:09:25) - Is this a problem elsewhere?
• (01:12:20) - The tooling should be better
• (01:16:47) - The Community that was
• (01:23:06) - Matthew's Is Go Dead? Perspective
• (01:23:59) - Jamie's Is Go Dead? Perspective
• (01:25:19) - What does Dead mean?
• (01:28:23) - Go should be able to do more
• (01:31:22) - Go as an identity
• (01:32:33) - Some added nuance
• (01:39:18) - A difference in leadership
• (01:43:03) - A lack of inclusion
• (01:57:34) - Blame the system, not the person
• (02:03:00) - Outro

Hosts

• Kris Brandow - Host
• Dylan Bourque - Host
• Matthew Sanabria - Host
• Jamie Tanna - Host

Socials:

• Website
• Bluesky
• Threads
• X/Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram