Supply Chain Safety

Supply chain safety

1. Install with scripts off. Lifecycle hooks (preinstall, postinstall, prepare) run arbitrary code with your privileges and are the top npm attack vector: npm ci --ignore-scripts, pnpm install --ignore-scripts, bun install (scripts off by default for new deps). If the project truly needs a hook (native builds), run that one package's build explicitly afterward and say so.
2. Reproduce, do not resolve. In an existing repo use the lockfile verbatim: npm ci, pnpm install --frozen-lockfile, bun install --frozen-lockfile. Plain npm install may silently upgrade what the repo pinned.
3. Verify a package exists before adding it. Models hallucinate package names, and attackers register those names (slopsquatting). Check the registry first: npm view <name> versions time downloads — a package that appeared last week with three downloads is not the library you meant.
4. Prefer boring versions. The freshest release is the compromise window; recent campaigns shipped malware in brand-new patch versions of trusted packages. Pin exact versions and let a new release age unless it fixes something you need.
5. Read the lockfile diff before committing it. New transitive deps, changed registry URLs, or git/tarball sources appearing in a routine change are the dependency-confusion signature. git diff --stat the lockfile and question anything you did not intend to add.
6. Never pipe the internet into a shell. No curl ... | bash, no wget ... | sh. Download to a file, read it, then decide.
7. Audit is a signal, not a chore. npm audit --omit=dev after installs; report criticals to the user rather than auto-fixing with --force (that is a blind major bump).