Lambda the Ultimate

POLA Would Have Prevented the Event-Stream Incident by Kate Sills

The JavaScript world was rocked this week by news that the popular npm package event-stream included malicious code that attempted to steal the private keys of certain Bitcoin users.

Since the attack was discovered, both the JavaScript community and the cryptocurrency community have been passionately debating how to prevent such an attack. At Agoric, we think this attack was entirely preventable, and the answer is POLA, the Principle of Least Authority.

This npm / event-stream debacle is the perfect teaching moment for POLA (Principle of Least Authority), and for the need to support least authority for JavaScript libraries. My talk Securing EcmaScript, presentation to Node Security explained many of these issues prior to this particular incident.

For LtU, my best explanation of POLA is Verify What? Navigating the Attack Surface given to the "Formal Methods Meets JavaScript" workshop at Imperial College.