On: Malicious software libraries found in PyPI posing ...

[rantanplan]

The regex they have for identifying fake/harmful packages is wrong.

`pip list –format=legacy | egrep '^(acqusition|apidev-coop|bzip|crypt|django-server|pwd|setup-tools|telnet|urlib3|urllib) '`

This incorrectly lists `urllib3` or the `cryptography` package for example, which are perfectly valid packages.

[UPDATE]

Read "tobltobs" comment below. I incorrectly removed a trailing space from the regex.

[tobltobs → rantanplan]

Not for me. There is space at the end between the closing bracket and the apostrophe. Maybe you did remove this space when you corrected the smart apostrophes.

[rantanplan → tobltobs]

You're right. It seems I did remove the space. When I put it back in it doesn't print anything.

[osteele → rantanplan]

Conda users: Here's a script that runs this check against each environment:

https://gist.github.com/osteele/198b50a2a208e5bc7e5fb8d010cf...

[nariinano → rantanplan]

I believe urllib3 is built-in. So if you have installed it from PyPI you've gotten a malicious version.

[cpburns2009 → nariinano]

urllib and urllib2 are built-in for Python 2, and were merged and reorganized as just urllib in Python 3. urllib3 is a third-party module.

[haikuginger → cpburns2009]

This is correct. In general, though, most packages don't rely on urllib3 directly, but on `requests`, which uses urllib3 but provides a friendlier API and built-in SSL cert verification.

[wyldfire → nariinano]

It's not generally true that built-in packages which also appear on PyPI are malicious.

Many batteries-included packages are also maintained outside of CPython. This is because: (1) in many cases they existed outside prior to being included in CPython, (2) they can experiment with new features before they're included in the CPython version of their package.

[rantanplan → nariinano]

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/urllib3

[julianj → rantanplan]

xml should be added to this list.

https://pypkg.com/pypi/xml/f/setup.py

[jastr → rantanplan]

pip list --format=legacy | cut -d' ' -f1 | xargs egrep '^(acqusition|apidev-coop|bzip|crypt|django-server|pwd|setup-tools|telnet|urlib3|urllib)$'

[pmoriarty → jastr]

When running that command, I get output like this:

  grep: alabaster: No such file or directory
  grep: appdirs: No such file or directory
  grep: arandr: No such file or directory

for dozens and dozens of packages. Are those errors benign?

[jwilk → pmoriarty]

No, jastr's command is wrong.

[jastr → jwilk]

Whoops, remove the xargs