[tomashertus]

It’s ultimately a numbers game. The more malicious seeds are planted, the higher the likelihood that one of them will be pulled into a real-world build pipeline. Platforms like GitHub, NPM, and other open repositories are ideal staging grounds because very few engineering organizations are willing to block traffic from them. That makes them near-perfect hiding spots for malicious content.

And the asymmetry is stark: attackers only need to succeed once. It takes just a single developer installing a compromised package to trigger a breach with potentially massive downstream consequences. So while I agree that quantifying impact is critical, dismissing large-scale seeding campaigns because “no one might have downloaded it” ignores the risk.

[woodruffw]

> The more malicious seeds are planted, the higher the likelihood that one of them will be pulled into a real-world build pipeline.

Sure, but you still need to show the impact. Not all "seeds" are equal; that's why we categorize attacks as either opportunistic or targeted (and within that, there's the kind of "lazy" opportunism of package spam versus "motivated" opportunism of trying to trick developers into using a specific compromised package).

(And to be clear, I'm not ignoring the risk here! I believe we can do better about qualifying the risk, which does exist.)

[rtaylorgarlock]

In a world where PR-focused organizations (not saying it's right or that's how it should be, but that 'it do be like it is') actively work to hide breaches on occasion? Should they not publicly success a win and support 'open source' while celebrating a dub, while giving them a sales tool / credibility?