This meme was brought to you by the PyPI Director of Infrastructure who accidentally hardcoded credentials - which could have resulted in compromissing the entire core Python ecosystem.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (4 children)

At my workplace, we use the string @nocommit to designate code that shouldn't be checked in. Usually in a comment:

// @nocommit temporary for testing
apiKey = 'blah';
// apiKey = getKeyFromKeychain();

but it can be anywhere in the file.

There's a lint rule that looks for @nocommit in all modified files. It shows a lint error in dev and in our code review / build system, and commits that contain @nocommit anywhere are completely blocked from being merged.

(the code in the lint rule does something like "@no"+"commit" to avoid triggering itself)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This sounds like a really useful solution, how do you implement something like this? Especially with linter integration

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

I'm not sure, sorry. The source control team at work set it up a long time ago. I don't know how it works - I'm just a user of it.

The linter probably just runs git diff | grep @nocommit or similar.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Depending on which stack you’re using, you could use https://danger.systems to automatically fail PRs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

PRs? Isn't the point of @nocommit that something does not get committed, and therefore no credentials are stored in the git repository? Even if the PR does not get merged, the file is still stored as a hit object and can be restored.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I read the lint part and my brain forgot about everything else. You could stick the danger call in a pre commit hook though.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

This is a huge idea. I'm stealing it.

Not just for credentials, there are many times where I change a setting or whatever and just put "//TODO: remember to set it back to '...' before commiting". I forget to change it back 99% of the time.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

At my workplace, we use the string @nocommit to designate code that shouldn’t be checked in

That approach seems useful but it wouldn't have prevented the PyPI incident OP links to: the access token was temporarily entered in a .py python source file, but it was not committed to git. The leak was via .pyc compiled python files which made it into a published docker build.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but a combination of this approach, and adding all compiled file types including .pyc to .gitignore would fix it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

adding all compiled file types including .pyc to .gitignore would fix it

But in this case they didn't accidentally put the token in git; the place where they forgot to put *.pyc was .dockerignore.

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

Neat idea. This could be refined by adding a git hook that runs (rip)grep on the entire codebase and fails if anything is found upon commit may accomplish a similar result and stop the code from being committed entirely. Requires a bit more setup work on de developers end, though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Would a git hook block you from committing it locally, or would it just run on the server side?

I'm not sure how our one at work is implemented, but we can actually commit @nocommit files in our local repo, and push them into the code review system. We just can't merge any changes that contain it.

It's used for common workflows like creating new database entities. During development, the ORM system creates a dev database on a test DB cluster and automatically points the code for the new table to it, with a @nocommit comment above it. When the code is approved, the new schema is pushed to prod and the code is updated to point to the real DB.

Also, the codebase is way too large for something like ripgrep to search the whole codebase in a reasonable time, which is why it only searches the commit diffs themselves.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

There are many git hooks. One of them checks each commit, but there's another that triggers on merges.