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PEP 708: Extending the Repository API to Mitigate Dependency Confusion Attacks (#3019) 

Co-authored-by: Jelle Zijlstra <jelle.zijlstra@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: C.A.M. Gerlach <CAM.Gerlach@Gerlach.CAM>
Co-authored-by: Hugo van Kemenade <hugovk@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Stefano Rivera <github@rivera.za.net>
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PEP: 708
Title: Extending the Repository API to Mitigate Dependency Confusion Attacks
Author: Donald Stufft <donald@stufft.io>
PEP-Delegate: Paul Moore <p.f.moore@gmail.com>
Status: Draft
Type: Standards Track
Topic: Packaging
Content-Type: text/x-rst
Created: 20-Feb-2023
Post-History: `01-Feb-2023 <https://discuss.python.org/t/proposal-preventing-dependency-confusion-attacks-with-the-map-file/23414/>`__,
Abstract
========
Dependency confusion attacks, in which a malicious package is installed instead
of the one the user expected, are an `increasingly common supply chain threat
<https://medium.com/@alex.birsan/dependency-confusion-4a5d60fec610>`__.
Most such attacks against Python dependencies, including the
`recent PyTorch incident <https://pytorch.org/blog/compromised-nightly-dependency/>`_,
occur with multiple package repositories, where a dependency expected to come
from one repository (e.g. a custom index) is installed from another (e.g. PyPI).
To help address this problem, this PEP proposes extending the
:ref:`Simple Repository API <packaging:simple-repository-api>`
to allow repository operators to indicate that a project found on their
repository "tracks" a project on a different repository, and allows projects to
extend their namespaces across multiple repositories.
These features will allow installers to determine when a project being made
available from a particular mix of repositories is expected and should be
allowed, and when it is not and should halt the install with an error to protect
the user.
Motivation
===========
There is a long-standing class of attacks that are called "dependency confusion"
attacks, which roughly boil down to an individual user expected to get package
``A``, but instead they got ``B``. In Python, this almost always happens due to
the configuration of multiple repositories (possibly including the default of
PyPI), where they expected package ``A`` to come from repository ``X``, but
someone is able to publish package ``B`` to repository ``Y`` under the same
name.
Dependency Confusion attacks have long been possible, but they've recently
gained press with
`public examples of cases where these attacks were successfully executed <https://medium.com/@alex.birsan/dependency-confusion-4a5d60fec610>`__.
A specific example of this is the recent case where the PyTorch project had an
internal package named ``torchtriton`` which was only ever intended to be
installed from their repositories located at ``https://download.pytorch.org/``,
but that repository was designed to be used in conjunction with PyPI, and
the name of ``torchtriton`` was not claimed on PyPI, which allowed the attacker
to use that name and publish a malicious version.
There are a number of ways to mitigate against these attacks today, but they all
require that the end user go out of their way to protect themselves, rather than
being protected by default. This means that for the vast bulk of users, they are
likely to remain vulnerable, even if they are ultimately aware of these types of
attacks.
Ultimately the underlying cause of these attacks come from the fact that there
is no globally unique namespace that all Python package names come from.
Instead, each repository is its own distinct namespace, and when given an
"abstract" name such as ``spam`` to install, an installer has to implicitly turn
that into a "concrete" name such as ``pypi.org:spam`` or ``example.com:spam``.
Currently the standard behavior in Python installation tools is to implicitly
flatten these multiple namespaces into one that contains the files from all
namespaces.
This assumption that collapsing the namespaces is what was expected means that
when packages with the same name in different repositories
are authored by different parties (such as in the ``torchtriton`` case)
dependency confusion attacks become possible.
This is made particularly tricky in that there is no "right" answer; there are
valid use cases both for wanting two repositories merged into one namespace
*and* for wanting two repositories to be treated as distinct namespaces. This
means that an installer needs some mechanism by which to determine when it
should merge the namespaces of multiple repositories and when it should not,
rather than a blanket always merge or never merge rule.
This functionality could be pushed directly to the end user, since ultimately
the end user is the person whose expectations of what gets installed from what
repository actually matters. However, by extending the repository specification
to allow a repository to indicate when it is safe, we can enable individual
projects and repositories to "work by default", even when their
project naturally spans multiple distinct namespaces, while maintaining the
ability for an installer to be secure by default.
On its own, this PEP does not solve dependency confusion attacks, but what it
does do is provide enough information so that installers can prevent them
without causing too much collateral damage to otherwise valid and safe use
cases.
Rationale
=========
There are two broad use cases for merging names across repositories that this
PEP seeks to enable.
The first use case is when one repository is not defining its own names, but
rather is extending names defined in another repository. This commonly happens
in cases where a project is being mirrored from one repository to another (see
`Bandersnatch <https://pypi.org/project/bandersnatch/>`__) or when a repository
is providing supplementary artifacts for a specific platform (see
`Piwheels <https://www.piwheels.org/>`__).
In this case neither the repository nor the projects that are being extended
may have any knowledge that they are being extended or by whom, so this cannot
rely on any information that isn't present in the "extending" repository itself.
The second use case is when the project wants to publish to one "main"
repository, but then have additional repositories that provide binaries for
additional platforms, GPUs, CPUs, etc. Currently wheel tags are not sufficiently
able to express these types of binary compatibility, so projects that wish to
rely on them are forced to set up multiple repositories and have their users
manually configure them to get the correct binaries for their platform, GPU,
CPU, etc.
This use case is similiar to the first, but the important difference that makes
it a distinct use case on it's own is who is providing the information and what
their level of trust is.
When a user configures a specific repository (or relies on the default) there
is no ambiguity as to what repository they mean. A repository is identified by
an URL, and through the domain system, URLs are globally unique identifiers.
This lack of ambiguity means that an installer can assume that the repository
operator is trustworthy and can trust metadata that they provide without needing
to validate it.
On the flip side, given an installer finds a name in multiple repositories it is
ambiguous which of them the installer should trust. This ambiguity means that an
installer cannot assume that the project owner on either repository is
trustworthy and needs to validate that they are indeed the same project and that
one isn't a dependency confusion attack.
Without some way for the installer to validate the metadata between multiple
repositories, projects would be forced into becoming repository operators to
safely support this use case. That wouldn't be a particularly wrong choice to
make; however, there is a danger that if we don't provide a way for repositories
to let project owners express this relationship safely, they will be
incentivized to let them use the repository operator's metadata instead which
would reintroduce the original insecurity.
Specification
=============
This specification defines the changes in version 1.2 of the simple repository
API, adding new two new metadata items: Repository "Tracks" and "Alternate
Locations".
Repository "Tracks" Metadata
----------------------------
To enable one repository to extend another, this PEP allows the extending
repository to declare that it "tracks" another repository by adding the URL
of the repository that it is extending. This is exposed in JSON as the key
``meta.tracks`` and in HTML as a meta element named ``pypi:tracks``.
There are a few key properties that **MUST** be preserved when using this
metadata:
- It **MUST** be under the control of the repository operators themselves, not
any individual publisher using that repository.
- It **MUST** represent the same "project" as the project at the referenced URL.
- This does not mean that it needs to serve the same files. It is valid for it
to include binaries built on different platforms, copies with local patches
being applied, etc. This is purposefully left vague as it's ultimately up to
the expectations that the users have of the repository and its operators
what exactly constitutes the "same" project.
- It **MUST** point to the repository that "owns" the namespace, not another
repository that is also tracking that namespace.
- It **MUST** point to a project with the exact same name (after normalization).
- It **MUST** point to the actual URL for that project, not the base URL for the
extended repository.
It is **NOT** required that every name in a repository tracks the same
repository, or that they all track a repository at all. Mixed use repositories
where some names track a repository and some names do not are explicitly
allowed.
JSON
~~~~
.. code-block:: JSON
{
"meta": {
"api-version": "1.2",
"tracks": "https://pypi.org/simple/holygrail/"
},
"name": "holygrail",
"files": [
{
"filename": "holygrail-1.0.tar.gz",
"url": "https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0.tar.gz",
"hashes": {"sha256": "...", "blake2b": "..."},
"requires-python": ">=3.7",
"yanked": "Had a vulnerability"
},
{
"filename": "holygrail-1.0-py3-none-any.whl",
"url": "https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0-py3-none-any.whl",
"hashes": {"sha256": "...", "blake2b": "..."},
"requires-python": ">=3.7",
"dist-info-metadata": true
}
]
}
HTML
~~~~
.. code-block:: HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta name="pypi:repository-version" content="1.2">
<meta name="pypi:tracks" content="https://pypi.org/simple/holygrail/">
</head>
<body>
<a href="https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0.tar.gz#sha256=...">
<a href="https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0-py3-none-any.whl#sha256=...">
</body>
</html>
"Alternate Locations" Metadata
------------------------------
To enable a project to extend its namespace across multiple repositories, this
PEP allows a project owner to declare a list of "alternate locations" for their
project. This is exposed in JSON as the key ``alternate-locations`` and in HTML
as a meta element named ``pypi-alternate-locations``, which may be used multiple
times.
There are a few key properties that **MUST** be observed when using this
metadata:
- In order for this metadata to be trusted, there **MUST** be agreement between
all locations where that project is found as to what the alternate locations
are.
- When using alternate locations, clients **MUST** implicitly assume that the
url the response was fetched from was included in the list. This means that
if you fetch from ``https://pypi.org/simple/foo/`` and it has an
``alternate-locations`` metadata that has the value
``["https://example.com/simple/foo/"]``, then you **MUST** treat it as if it
had the value
``["https://example.com/simple/foo/", "https://pypi.org/simple/foo/"]``.
- Order of the elements within the array does not have any particular meaning.
When an installer encounters a project that is using the alternate locations
metadata it **SHOULD** consider that all repositories named are extending the
same namespace across multiple repositories.
JSON
~~~~
.. code-block:: JSON
{
"meta": {
"api-version": "1.2"
},
"name": "holygrail",
"alternate-locations": ["https://pypi.org/simple/holygrail/", "https://test.pypi.org/simple/holygrail/"],
"files": [
{
"filename": "holygrail-1.0.tar.gz",
"url": "https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0.tar.gz",
"hashes": {"sha256": "...", "blake2b": "..."},
"requires-python": ">=3.7",
"yanked": "Had a vulnerability"
},
{
"filename": "holygrail-1.0-py3-none-any.whl",
"url": "https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0-py3-none-any.whl",
"hashes": {"sha256": "...", "blake2b": "..."},
"requires-python": ">=3.7",
"dist-info-metadata": true
}
]
}
HTML
~~~~
.. code-block:: HTML
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta name="pypi:repository-version" content="1.2">
<meta name="pypi:alternate-locations" content="https://pypi.org/simple/holygrail/">
<meta name="pypi:alternate-locations" content="https://test.pypi.org/simple/holygrail/">
</head>
<body>
<a href="https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0.tar.gz#sha256=...">
<a href="https://example.com/files/holygrail-1.0-py3-none-any.whl#sha256=...">
</body>
</html>
Recommendations
===============
This section is non-normative; it provides recommendations to installers in how
to interpret this metadata that this PEP feels provides the best tradeoff
between protecting users by default and minimizing breakages to existing
workflows. These recommendations are not binding, and installers are free to
ignore them, or apply them selectively as they make sense in their specific
situations.
File Discovery Algorithm
------------------------
.. note::
This algorithm is written based on how pip currently discovers files;
other installers may adapt this based on their own discovery procedures.
Currently the "standard" file discovery algorithm looks something like this:
1. Generate a list of all files across all configured repositories.
2. Filter out any files that do not match known hashes from a lockfile or
requirements file.
3. Filter out any files that do not match the current platform, Python version,
etc.
4. Pass that list of files into the resolver where it will attempt to resolve
the "best" match out of those files, irrespective of which repository it came
from.
It is recommended that installers change their file discovery algorithm to take
into account the new metadata, and instead do:
1. Generate a list of all files across all configured repositories.
2. Filter out any files that do not match known hashes from a lockfile or
requirements file.
3. If the end user has explicitly told the installer to fetch the project from
specific repositories, filter out all other repositories and skip to 5.
4. Look to see if the discovered files span multiple repositories; if they do
then determine if either "Tracks" or "Alternate Locations" metadata allows
safely merging *ALL* of the repositories where files were discovered
together. If that metadata does **NOT** allow that, then generate an error,
otherwise continue.
- **Note:** This only applies to *remote* repositories; repositories that
exist on the local filesystem **SHOULD** always be implicitly allowed to be
merged to any remote repository.
5. Filter out any files that do not match the current platform, Python version,
etc.
6. Pass that list of files into the resolver where it will attempt to resolve
the "best" match out of those files, irrespective of what repository it came
from.
This is somewhat subtle, but the key things in the recommendation are:
- Users who are using lock files or requirements files that include specific
hashes of artifacts that are "valid" are assumed to be protected by nature of
those hashes, since the rest of these recommendations would apply during
hash generation. Thus, we filter out unknown hashes up front.
- If the user has explicitly told the installer that it wants to fetch a project
from a certain set of repositories, then there is no reason to question that
and we assume that they've made sure it is safe to merge those namespaces.
- If the project in question only comes from a single repository, then there is
no chance of dependency confusion, so there's no reason to do anything but
allow.
- We check for the metadata in this PEP before filtering out based on platform,
Python version, etc., because we don't want errors that only show up on
certain platforms, Python versions, etc.
- If nothing tells us merging the namespaces is safe, we refuse to implicitly
assume it is, and generate an error instead.
- Otherwise we merge the namespaces, and continue on.
This algorithm ensures that an installer never assumes that two disparate
namespaces can be flattened into one, which for all practical purposes
eliminates the possibility of any kind of dependency confusion attack, while
still giving power throughout the stack in a safe way to allow people to
explicitly declare when those disparate namespaces are actually one logical
namespace that can be safely merged.
The above algorithm is mostly a conceptual model. In reality the algorithm may
end up being slightly different in order to be more privacy preserving and
faster, or even just adapted to fit a specific installer better.
Explicit Configuration for End Users
------------------------------------
This PEP avoids dictating or recommending a specific mechanism by which an
installer allows an end user to configure exactly what repositories they want a
specific package to be installed from. However, it does recommend that
installers do provide *some* mechanism for end users to provide that
configuration, as without it users can end up in a DoS situation in cases
like ``torchtriton`` where they're just completely broken unless they resolve
the namespace collision externally (get the name taken down on one repository,
stand up a personal repository that handles the merging, etc).
This configuration also allows end users to pre-emptively secure themselves
during what is likely to be a long transition until the default behavior is
safe.
How to Communicate This
=======================
.. note::
This example is pip specific and assumes specifics about how pip will
choose to implement this PEP; it's included as an example of how we can
communicate this change, and not intended to constrain pip or any other
installer in how they implement this. This may ultimately be the actual basis
for communication, and if so will need be edited for accuracy and clarity.
This section should be read as if it were an entire "post" to communicate this
change that could be used for a blog post, email, or discourse post.
There's a long-standing class of attacks that are called "dependency confusion"
attacks, which roughly boil down to an individual expected to get package ``A``,
but instead they got ``B``. In Python, this almost always happens due to the end
user having configured multiple repositories, where they expect package ``A`` to
come from repository ``X``, but someone is able to publish package ``B`` with
the same name as package ``A`` in repository ``Y``.
There are a number of ways to mitigate against these attacks today, but they all
require that the end user explicitly go out of their way to protect themselves,
rather than it being inherently safe.
In an effort to secure pip's users and protect them from these types of attacks,
we will be changing how pip discovers packages to install.
What is Changing?
-----------------
When pip discovers that the same project is available from multiple remote
repositories, by default it will generate an error and refuse to proceed rather
than make a guess about which repository was the correct one to install from.
Projects that natively publish to multiple repositories will be given the
ability to safely "link" their repositories together so that pip does not error
when those repositories are used together.
End users of pip will be given the ability to explicitly define one or more
repositories that are valid for a specific project, causing pip to only consider
those repositories for that project, and avoiding generating an error
altogether.
See TBD for more information.
Who is Affected?
----------------
Users who are installing from multiple remote (e.g. not present on the local
filesystem) repositories may be affected by having pip error instead of
successfully install if:
- They install a project where the same "name" is being served by multiple
remote repositories.
- The project name that is available from multiple remote repositories has not
used one of the defined mechanisms to link those repositories together.
- The user invoking pip has not used the defined mechanism to explicitly control
what repositories are valid for a particular project.
Users who are not using multiple remote repositories will not be affected at
all, which includes users who are only using a single remote repository, plus a
local filesystem "wheel house".
What do I need to do?
---------------------
As a pip User?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you're using only a single remote repository you do not have to do anything.
If you're using multiple remote repositories, you can opt into the new behavior
by adding ``--use-feature=TBD`` to your pip invocation to see if any of your
dependencies are being served from multiple remote repositories. If they are,
you should audit them to determine why they are, and what the best remediation
step will be for you.
Once this behavior becomes the default, you can opt out of it temporarily by
adding ``--use-deprecated=TBD`` to your pip invocation.
If you're using projects that are not hosted on a public repository, but you
still have the public repository as a fallback, consider configuring pip with a
repository file to be explicit where that dependency is meant to come from to
prevent registration of that name in a public repository to cause pip to error
for you.
As a Project Owner?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If you only publish your project to a single repository, then you do not have to
do anything.
If you publish your project to multiple repositories that are intended to be
used together at the same time, configure all repositories to serve the
alternate repository metadata to prevent breakages for your end users.
If you publish your project to a single repository, but it is commonly used in
conjunction with other repositories, consider preemptively registering your
names with those repositories to prevent a third party from being able to cause
your users ``pip install`` invocations to start failing. This may not be
available if your project name is too generic or if the repositories have
policies that prevent defensive name squatting.
As a Repository Operator?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
You'll need to decide how you intend for your repository to be used by your end
users and how you want them to use it.
For private repositories that host private projects, it is recommended that you
mirror the public projects that your users depend on into your own repository,
taking care not to let a public project merge with a private project, and tell
your users to use the ``--index-url`` option to use only your repository.
For public repositories that host public projects, you should implement the
alternate repository mechanism and enable the owners of those projects to
configure the list of repositories that their project is available from if they
make it available from more than one repository.
For public repositories that "track" another repository, but provide
supplemental artifacts such as wheels built for a specific platform, you should
implement the "tracks" metadata for your repository. However, this information
**MUST NOT** be settable by end users who are publishing projects to your
repository. See TBD for more information.
Rejected Ideas
==============
*Note: Some of these are somewhat specific to pip, but any solution that doesn't
work for pip isn't a particularly useful solution.*
Implicitly allow mirrors when the list of files are the same
------------------------------------------------------------
If every repository returns the exact same list of files, then it is safe to
consider those repositories to be the same namespace and implicitly merge them.
This would possibly mean that mirrors would be automatically allowed without any
work on any user or repository operator's part.
Unfortunately, this has two failings that make it undesirable:
- It only solves the case of mirrors that are exact copies of each other, but
not repositories that "track" another one, which ends up being a more generic
solution.
- Even in the case of exact mirrors, multiple repositories mirroring each other
is a distributed system will not always be fully consistent with each
other, effectively an eventually consistent system. This means that
repositories that relied on this implicit heuristic to work would have
sporadic failures due to drift between the source repository and the mirror
repositories.
Provide a mechanism to order the repositories
---------------------------------------------
Providing some mechanism to give the repositories an order, and then short
circuiting the discovery algorithm when it finds the first repository that
provides files for that project is another workable solution that is safe if the
order is specified correctly.
However, this has been rejected for a number of reasons:
- We've spent 15+ years educating users that the ordering of repositories being
specified is not meaningful, and they effectively have an undefined order. It
would be difficult to backpedal on that and start saying that now order
matters.
- Users can easily rearrange the order that they specify their repositories in
within a single location, but when loading repositories from multiple
locations (env var, conf file, requirements file, cli arguments) the order is
hard coded into pip. While it would be a deterministic and documented order,
there's no reason to assume it's the order that the user wants their
repositories to be defined in, forcing them to contort how they configure pip
so that the implicit ordering ends up being the correct one.
- The above can be mitigated by providing a way to explicitly declare the order
rather than by implicitly using the order they were defined in; however, that
then means that the protections are not provided unless the user does some
explicit configuration.
- Ordering assumes that one repository is *always* preferred over another
repository without any way to decide on a project by project basis.
- Relying on ordering is subtle; if I look at an ordering of repositories, I
have no way of knowing or ensuring in advance what names are going
to come from what repositories. I can only know in that moment what names are
provided by which repositories.
- Relying on ordering is fragile. There's no reason to assume that two disparate
repositories are not going to have random naming collisions—what happens if
I'm using a library from a lower priority repository and then a higher
priority repository happens to start having a colliding name?
- In cases where ordering does the wrong thing, it does so silently, with no
feedback given to the user. This is by design because it doesn't actually know
what the wrong or right thing is, it's just hoping that order will give the
right thing, and if it does then users are protected without any breakage.
However, when it does the wrong thing, users are left with a very confusing
behavior coming from pip, where it's just silently installing the wrong thing.
There is a variant of this idea which effectively says that it's really just
PyPI's nature of open registration that causes the real problems, so if we treat
all repositories but the "default" one as equal priority, and then treat the
default one as a lower priority then we'll fix things.
That is true in that it does improve things, but it has many of the same
problems as the general ordering idea (though not all of them).
It also assumes that PyPI, or whatever repository is configured as the
"default", is the only repository with open registration of names.
However, projects like `Piwheels <https://www.piwheels.org/>`_ exist
which users are expected to use in addition to PyPI,
which also effectively have open registration of names
since it tracks whatever names are registered on PyPI.
Rely on repository proxies
--------------------------
One possible solution is to instead of having the installer have to solve this,
to instead depend on repository proxies that can intelligently merge multiple
repositories safely. This could provide a better experience for people with
complex needs because they can have configuration and features that are
dedicated to the problem space.
However, that has been rejected because:
- It requires users to opt into using them, unless we also remove the facilities
to have more than one repository in installers to force users into using a
repository proxy when they need multiple repositories.
- Removing facilities to have more than one repository configured has been
rejected because it would be too disruptive to end users.
- A user may need different outcomes of merging multiple repositories in
different contexts, or may need to merge different, mutually exclusive
repositories. This means they'll need to actually set up multiple repository
proxies for each unique set of options.
- It requires users to maintain infrastructure or it requires adding features in
installers to automatically spin up a repository for each invocation.
- It doesn't actually change the requirement to need to have a solution to these
problems, it just shifts the responsibility of implementation from installers
to some repository proxy, but in either case we still need something that
figures out how to merge these disparate namespaces.
- Ultimately, most users do not want to have to stand up a repository proxy just
to safely interact with multiple repositories.
Rely only on hash checking
--------------------------
Another possible solution is to rely on hash checking, since with hash checking
enabled users cannot get an artifact that they didn't expect; it doesn't matter
if the namespaces are incorrectly merged or not.
This is certainly a solution; unfortunately it also suffers from problems that
make it unworkable:
- It requires users to opt in to it, so users are still unprotected by default.
- It requires users to do a bunch of labor to manage their hashes, which is
something that most users are unlikely to be willing to do.
- It is difficult and verbose to get the protection when users are not using a
``requirements.txt`` file as the source of their dependencies (this affects
build time dependencies, and dependencies provided at the command line).
- It only sort of solves the problem, in a way it just shifts the responsibility
of the problem to be whatever system is generating the hashes that the
installer would use. If that system isn't a human manually validating hashes,
which it's unlikely it would be, then we've just shifted the question of how
to merge these namespaces to whatever tool implements the maintenance of the
hashes.
Require all projects to exist in the "default" repository
---------------------------------------------------------
Another idea is that we can narrow the scope of ``--extra-index-url`` such that
its only supported use is to refer to supplemental repositories to the default
repository, effectively saying that the default repository defines the
namespace, and every additional repository just extends it with extra packages.
The implementation of this would roughly be to require that the project **MUST**
be registered with the default repository in order for any additional
repositories to work.
This sort of works if you successfully narrow the scope in that way, but
ultimately it has been rejected because:
- Users are unlikely to understand or accept this reduced scope, and thus are
likely to attempt to continue to use it in the now unsupported fashion.
- This is complicated by the fact that with the scope now narrowed, users who
have the excluded workflow no longer have any alternative besides setting up
a repository proxy, which takes infrastructure and effort that they
previously didn't have to do.
- It assumes that just because a name in an "extra" repository is the same as in
the default repository, that they are the same project. If we were starting
from scratch in a brand new ecosystem then maybe we could make this assumption
from the start and make it stick, but it's going to be incredibly difficult to
get the ecosystem to adjust to that change.
- This is a fundamental issue with this approach; the underlying problem that
drives dependency confusion is that we're taking disparate namespaces and
flattening them into one. This approach essentially just declares that OK,
and attempts to mitigate it by requiring everyone to register their names.
- Because of the above assumption, in cases where a name in an extra repository
collides by accident with the default repository, it's going to appear to work
for those users, but they are going to be silently in a state of dependency
confusion.
- This is made worse by the fact that the person who owns the name that is
allowing this to work is going to be completely unaware of the role that
they're playing for that user, and might possibly delete their project or
hand it off to someone else, potentially allowing them to inadvertently
allow a malicious user to take it over.
- Users are likely to attempt to get back to a working state by registering
their names in their default repository as a defensive name squat. Their
ability to do this will depend on the specific policies of their default
repository, whether someone already has that name, whether it's too generic,
etc. As a best case scenario it will cause needless placeholder projects that
serve no purpose other than to secure some internal use of a name.
Move to Globally Unique Names
-----------------------------
The main reason this problem exists is that we don't have globally unique names,
we have locally unique names that exist under multiple namespaces that we are
attempting to merge into a single flat namespace. If we could instead come up
with a way to have globally unique names, we could sidestep the entire issue.
This idea has been rejected because:
- Generating globally unique but secure names that are also meaningful to humans
is a nearly impossible feat without piggybacking off of some kind of
centralized database. To my knowledge the only systems that have managed to do
this end up piggybacking off of the domain system and refer to packages by
URLs with domains etc.
- Even if we come up with a mechanism to get globally unique names, our ability
to retrofit that into our decades old system is practically zero without
burning it all to the ground and starting over. The best we could probably do
is declare that all non globally unique names are implicitly names on the PyPI
domain name, and force everyone with a non PyPI package to rename their
package.
- This would upend so many core assumptions and fundamental parts of our current
system it's hard to even know where to start to list them.
Only recommend that installers offer explicit configuration
-----------------------------------------------------------
One idea that has come up is to essentially just implement the explicit
configuration and don't make any other changes to anything else. The specific
proposal for a mapping policy is what actually inspired the explicit
configuration option, and created a file that looked something like:
.. code-block:: JSON
{
"repositories": {
"PyTorch": ["https://download.pytorch.org/whl/nightly"],
"PyPI": ["https://pypi.org/simple"]
},
"mapping": [
{
"paths": ["torch*"],
"repositories": ["PyTorch"],
"terminating": true
},
{
"paths": ["*"],
"repositories": ["PyPI"]
}
]
}
The recommendation to have explicit configuration pushes the decision on how to
implement that onto each installer, allowing them to choose what works best for
their users.
Ultimately only implementing some kind of explicit configuration was rejected
because by its nature it's opt in, so it doesn't protect average users who are
least capable to solve the problem with the existing tools; by adding additional
protections alongside the explicit configuration, we are able to protect all
users by default.
Additionally, relying on only explicit configuration also means that every end
user has to resolve the same problem over and over again, even in cases like
mirrors of PyPI, Piwheels, PyTorch, etc. In each and every case they have to sit
there and make decisions (or find some example to cargo cult) in order to be
secure. Adding extra features into the mix allows us to centralize those
protections where we can, while still giving advanced end users the ability to
completely control their own destiny.
Scopes à la npm
---------------
There's been some suggestion that
`scopes similar to how npm has implemented them <https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v9/using-npm/scope>`__
may ultimately solve this. Ultimately scopes do not change anything about this
problem. As far as I know scopes in npm are not globally unique, they're tied to
a specific registry just like unscoped names are. However what scopes do enable
is an obvious mechanism for grouping related projects and the ability for a user
or organization on npm.org to claim an entire scope, which makes explicit
configuration significantly easier to handle because you can be assured that
there's a whole little slice of the namespace that wholly belongs to you, and
you can easily write a rule that assigns an entire scope to a specific non
public registry.
Unfortunately, it basically ends up being an easier version of the idea to only
use explicit configuration, which works ok in npm because its not particularly
common for people to use their own registries, but in Python we encourage you to
do just that.
Open Questions
==============
* The `original proposal document <https://docs.google.com/document/d/184fQkb6NggVQfYmjTDA7p_U3iWDKk6grc2DigT1X3Es/>`__
was targeted more specifically to a change to pip, and went into more
specific details as to what we expected from pip. Since dictating UX to
installers isn't something that we do in PEPs, I've rewritten those parts to
be more generic; however, that means that we lose the information on
repository files. Is that fine? Or should we standardize what a repository
file looks like so the same file can be given to multiple installers instead
of hand waving around the specific mechanism installers would use for
explicit configuration?
Acknowledgements
================
Thanks to Trishank Kuppusamy for kick starting the discussion that lead to this
PEP with his `proposal <https://discuss.python.org/t/proposal-preventing-dependency-confusion-attacks-with-the-map-file/23414>`__.
Thanks to Paul Moore, Pradyun Gedam, Steve Dower, and Trishank Kuppusamy for
providing early feedback and discussion on the ideas in this PEP.
Thanks to Jelle Zijlstra, C.A.M. Gerlach, Hugo van Kemenade, and Stefano Rivera
for copy editing and improving the structure and quality of this PEP.
Copyright
=========
This document is placed in the public domain or under the
CC0-1.0-Universal license, whichever is more permissive.