_content/blog: add supply-chain.md
Change-Id: I7e60ef59e4b425fdfcb3c9615431a426d910746d
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/website/+/397215
Reviewed-by: Russ Cox <rsc@golang.org>
Trust: Filippo Valsorda <valsorda@google.com>
Run-TryBot: Filippo Valsorda <valsorda@google.com>
TryBot-Result: Gopher Robot <gobot@golang.org>
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+---
+title: "How Go Mitigates Supply Chain Attacks"
+date: 2022-03-31
+by:
+- Filippo Valsorda
+summary: Go tooling and design help mitigate supply chain attacks at various stages.
+---
+
+Modern software engineering is collaborative, and based on reusing Open Source
+software.
+That exposes targets to supply chain attacks, where software projects are
+attacked by compromising their dependencies.
+
+Despite any process or technical measure, every dependency is unavoidably a
+trust relationship.
+However, the Go tooling and design help mitigate risk at various stages.
+
+
+## All builds are “locked”
+
+There is no way for changes in the outside world—such as a new version of a
+dependency being published—to automatically affect a Go build.
+
+Unlike most other package managers files, Go modules don’t have a separate list
+of constraints and a lock file pinning specific versions.
+The version of every dependency contributing to any Go build is fully determined
+by the [`go.mod` file](https://go.dev/ref/mod#go-mod-file) of the main module.
+
+Since Go 1.16, this determinism is enforced by default, and build commands (`go
+build`, `go test`, `go install`, `go run`, …) [will fail if the go.mod is
+incomplete](https://go.dev/ref/mod#go-mod-file-updates).
+The only commands that will change the `go.mod` (and therefore the build) are
+`go get` and `go mod tidy`.
+These commands are not expected to be run automatically or in CI, so changes to
+dependency trees must be made deliberately and have the opportunity to go
+through code review.
+
+This is very important for security, because when a CI system or new machine
+runs `go build`, the checked-in source is the ultimate and complete source of
+truth for what will get built.
+There is no way for third parties to affect that.
+
+Moreover, when a dependency is added with `go get`, its transitive dependencies
+are added at the version specified in the dependency’s `go.mod` file, not at
+their latest versions, thanks to
+[Minimal version selection](https://go.dev/ref/mod#minimal-version-selection).
+The same happens for invocations of
+`go install example.com/cmd/devtoolx@latest`, [the equivalents of which in some
+ecosystems bypass pinning](https://research.swtch.com/npm-colors).
+In Go, the latest version of `example.com/cmd/devtoolx` will be fetched, but
+then all the dependencies will be set by its `go.mod` file.
+
+If a module gets compromised and a new malicious version is published, no one
+will be affected until they explicitly update that dependency, providing the
+opportunity to review the changes and time for the ecosystem to detect the
+event.
+
+
+## Version contents never change
+
+Another key property necessary to ensure third parties can’t affect builds is
+that the contents of a module version are immutable.
+If an attacker that compromises a dependency could re-upload an existing
+version, they could automatically compromise all projects that depend on it.
+
+That’s what the [`go.sum` file](https://go.dev/ref/mod#go-sum-files) is for.
+It contains a list of cryptographic hashes of each dependency that contributes
+to the build.
+Again, an incomplete <code>go.sum</code> causes an error, and only <code>go
+get</code> and <code>go mod tidy</code> will modify it, so any changes to it
+will accompany a deliberate dependency change.
+Other builds are guaranteed to have a full set of checksums.
+
+This is a common feature of most lock files.
+Go goes beyond it with the
+[Checksum Database](https://go.dev/ref/mod#checksum-database) (sumdb for short),
+a global append-only cryptographically-verifiable list of go.sum entries.
+When `go get` needs to add an entry to the `go.sum` file, it fetches it from the
+sumdb along with cryptographic proof of the sumdb integrity.
+This ensures that not only every build of a certain module uses the same
+dependency contents, but that every module out there uses the same dependency
+contents!
+
+The sumdb makes it impossible for compromised dependencies or even
+Google-operated Go infrastructure to target specific dependents with modified
+(e.g. backdoored) source.
+You’re guaranteed to be using the exact same code that everyone else who’s using
+e.g. v1.9.2 of `example.com/modulex` is using and has reviewed.
+
+Finally, my favorite features of the sumdb: it doesn’t require any key
+management on the part of module authors, and it works seamlessly with the
+decentralized nature of Go modules.
+
+
+## The VCS is the source of truth
+
+Most projects are developed through some version control system (VCS) and then,
+in other ecosystems, uploaded to the package repository.
+This means there are two accounts that could be compromised, the VCS host and
+the package repository, the latter of which is used more rarely and more likely
+to be overlooked.
+It also means it’s easier to hide malicious code in the version uploaded to the
+repository, especially if the source is routinely modified as part of the
+upload, for example to minimize it.
+
+In Go, there is no such thing as a package repository account.
+The import path of a package embeds the information that `go mod download`
+[needs in order to fetch its
+module](https://pkg.go.dev/cmd/go#hdr-Remote_import_paths) directly from the
+VCS, where tags define versions.
+
+We do have the [Go Module Mirror](https://go.dev/blog/module-mirror-launch), but
+that’s only a proxy.
+Module authors don’t register an account and don’t upload versions to the proxy.
+The proxy uses the same logic that the `go` tool uses (in fact, the proxy runs
+`go mod download`) to fetch and cache a version.
+Since the Checksum Database guarantees that there can be only one source tree
+for a given module version, everyone using the proxy will see the same result as
+everyone bypassing it and fetching directly from the VCS.
+(If the version is not available anymore in the VCS or if its contents changed,
+fetching directly will lead to an error, while fetching from the proxy might
+still work, improving availability and protecting the ecosystem from [“left-pad”
+issues](https://blog.npmjs.org/post/141577284765/kik-left-pad-and-npm).)
+
+Running VCS tools on the client exposes a pretty large attack surface.
+That’s another place the Go Module Mirror helps: the `go` tool on the proxy runs
+inside a robust sandbox and is configured to support every VCS tool, while
+[the default is to only support the two major VCS
+systems](https://go.dev/ref/mod#vcs-govcs) (git and Mercurial).
+Anyone using the proxy can still fetch code published using off-by-default VCS
+systems, but attackers can’t reach that code in most installations.
+
+
+## Building code doesn’t execute it
+
+It is an explicit security design goal of the Go toolchain that neither fetching
+nor building code will let that code execute, even if it is untrusted and
+malicious.
+This is different from most other ecosystems, many of which have first-class
+support for running code at package fetch time.
+These “post-install” hooks have been used in the past as the most convenient way
+to turn a compromised dependency into compromised developer machines, and to
+[worm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_worm) through module authors.
+
+To be fair, if you’re fetching some code it’s often to execute it shortly
+afterwards, either as part of tests on a developer machine or as part of a
+binary in production, so lacking post-install hooks is only going to slow down
+attackers.
+(There is no security boundary within a build: any package that contributes to a
+build can define an `init` function.)
+However, it can be a meaningful risk mitigation, since you might be executing a
+binary or testing a package that only uses a subset of the module’s
+dependencies.
+For example, if you build and execute `example.com/cmd/devtoolx` on macOS there
+is no way for a Windows-only dependency or a dependency of
+`example.com/cmd/othertool` to compromise your machine.
+
+In Go, modules that don’t contribute code to a specific build have no security
+impact on it.
+
+
+## “A little copying is better than a little dependency”
+
+The final and maybe most important software supply chain risk mitigation in the
+Go ecosystem is the least technical one: Go has a culture of rejecting large
+dependency trees, and of preferring a bit of copying to adding a new dependency.
+It goes all the way back to one of the Go proverbs: [“a little copying is better
+than a little dependency”](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxWCEmMJFW0-TvSMzcMEAHZcpt2FsVXP65).
+The label “zero dependencies” is proudly worn by high-quality reusable Go
+modules.
+If you find yourself in need of a library, you’re likely to find it will not
+cause you to take on a dependency on dozens of other modules by other authors
+and owners.
+
+That’s enabled also by the rich standard library and additional modules (the
+`golang.org/x/...` ones), which provide commonly used high-level building blocks
+such as an HTTP stack, a TLS library, JSON encoding, etc.
+
+All together this means it’s possible to build rich, complex applications with
+just a handful of dependencies.
+No matter how good the tooling is, it can’t eliminate the risk involved in
+reusing code, so the strongest mitigation will always be a small dependency
+tree.
