Folks,

A colleague is preparing a presentation on general dependency security
issues. I'm not aware of any compromises of the Maven repo system such
that a malicious actor was able to push malware to client systems, but
I'm not sure it's never happened.

Does anyone know about anything like the attack on npm a couple of
years ago 
<https://www.trendmicro.com/vinfo/dk/security/news/cybercrime-and-digital-threats/hacker-infects-node-js-package-to-steal-from-bitcoin-wallets>
that happened in the Java space?

Even if something just went a little wonky in a way that could have
been used to serve malware but wasn't, that would be almost as
interesting.

Of course, I'd love for the answer to be, "No, that's never happened
to Java, and it can't because..." I suspect we're a little more
resistant to these classes of attacks than npm because version ranges
are far less common. However, I can't think of anything that would
prevent someone from buying and compromising future versions of any
particular artifact. It's not like intelligence agencies haven't
bought entire companies before,
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/>
and most open source projects could be had for a lot less.

-- 
Elliotte Rusty Harold
[email protected]

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