A recent Ars Technica article outlined a backdoor in the Go Module Mirror . Even though it's framed as a backdoor, and potentially a vulnerability, it's actually an exploit of a design choice designers of the module mirror made. Kris is joined by Matthew, Dylan, and guest host Jamie Tanna, to discuss this vulnerability-but-actually-feature, the implications for the Go community, and the wider reasons why something like this happened. We go on a journey through the history of modules, the Go community, and a whole lot more. We know this is a long one but we're sure you'll love it! Have thoughts? Reach out to us on social media and let us hear them! Thanks for tuning in and happy listening! Notes & Links: Go Module Mirror served backdoor to devs for 3+ years Go Supply Chain Attack: Malicious Package Exploits Go Module Proxy Caching for Persistence Abusing Go's infrastructure (from 8:38) #66653: x/pkgsite: links can point at source code that may not match what is served by the module proxy openapi.tanna.dev/go/validator (from 22:15) #44550: proposal: cmd/go: make major versions optional in import paths (from 1:15:56) Comment from above SourceHut will (not) blacklist the Go module mirror (from 9:19) Chapters: (00:05) - Intro (01:38) - Introducing Jamie Tanna (02:21) - The vulnerability that's actually a feature (04:53) - The Go Module Mirror (14:02) - Paternalism (21:14) - What are vanity URLs? (23:02) - Not just the official Go Module Mirror (27:58) - Unforgiving Module Proxies (29:23) - #BringBackGOPATH (29:36) - Tags are mutable (33:44) - What does a version mean? (35:10) - Jamie's Hot Take (38:20) - The Trails and Tribulations of Modules (42:03) - It's humans! (44:40) - How might we fix this? (49:12) - Is it too easy to fetch dependencies? (52:25) - Decentralized versus Centralized (57:24) - A Proxy is not an Origin (01:03:14) - Can we revalidate? (01:05:14) - I can't believe it's not SemVer! (01:06:34) - Analogy Time, featuring The Web! (01:09:25) - Is this a problem elsewhere? (01:12:20) - The tooling should be better (01:16:47) - The Community that was (01:23:06) - Matthew's Is Go Dead? Perspective (01:23:59) - Jamie's Is Go Dead? Perspective (01:25:19) - What does Dead mean? (01:28:23) - Go should be able to do more (01:31:22) - Go as an identity (01:32:33) - Some added nuance (01:39:18) - A difference in leadership (01:43:03) - A lack of inclusion (01:57:34) - Blame the system, not the person (02:03:00) - Outro Hosts Kris Brandow - Host Dylan Bourque - Host Matthew Sanabria - Host Jamie Tanna - Host Socials: Website Bluesky Threads X/Twitter LinkedIn Instagram
