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AI bots hallucinate software packages and devs download them (www.theregister.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 130 points 7 months ago (24 children)

*bad Devs

Always look on the official repository. Not just to see if it exists, but also to make sure it isn't a fake/malicious one

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago (10 children)

You'd be surprised how well someone who wants to can camouflage their package to look legit.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

True. You can't always be 100% sure. But a quick check for download counts/version count can help. And while searching for it in the repo, you can see other similarly named packages and prevent getting hit by a typo squatter.

Despite, it's not just for security. What if the package you're installing has a big banner in the readme that says "Deprecated and full of security issues"? It's not a bad package per say, but still something you need to know

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

*per se

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/per_se

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)