JavaScript is the world’s most popular programming language, providing many web frameworks that help developers build secure, reliable Node.js web applications. Each framework has unique features, and which framework is right for you depends on your preference and the type of application you intend to create. With so many frameworks available, you need a way to assess their security.
Were you tasked with building a product that requires the execution of dynamic JavaScript originating from end users? You might think building it on-top of Node.js VM module is a viable way to create a JavaScript sandbox. In this article, we’ll learn why that’s far from being a recommended approach and the security implications of doing so. Every now and then there’s a project that challenges the rudimentary and routine backend development. APIs? Message queues?
For most websites and apps, employing security-related HTTP headers has become standard practice. Websites use headers as part of HTTP requests and replies to convey information about a page or data sent via the HTTP protocol. They might include a Content-Encoding header to indicate that the content is a compressed zip file or a Location header to specify a redirect URL.
Microservices offer significant advantages compared to monoliths. You can scale the development more easily and have precise control over scaling infrastructure. Additionally, the ability to make many minor updates and incremental rollouts significantly reduces the time to market. Despite these benefits, microservices architecture presents a problem — the inability to access its services externally. Fortunately, an API gateway can resolve this issue.
Although it’s the holiday season, the festive spirit doesn’t extend to cyber attackers, who consider this a great opportunity to cause havoc. But the Mend research team doesn’t rest, and remains alert for threats and vulnerabilities. Our vigilant team has detected an attack on npm packages that utilized typosquatting to compromise nearly 300 NPM packages. Let’s take a look at the nature of the attack and what we did to protect our systems and our users.
File uploading is a commonly needed functionality in web applications. Because of this, many web frameworks provide ways to allow server-side applications to accept files and work with them. This is the same with Fastify, which is a Node.js web framework that is often regarded as a successor to Express. It’s fast and highly focused on providing the best developer experience with a powerful plugin architecture and the least overhead possible.
‘Tis the season for a busy weekend of software supply chain attacks. Over the past three days, the Mend research team identified two separate attacks that published malicious packages to npm. Mend Supply Chain Defender quickly identified the malicious code; the owners were notified, and the packages were removed. That does not fully remove the risk, however. The first package has 9.5 million downloads, while account CI keys were compromised in the second, which can cause significant damage.
NPM security has been a trending topic in the media in recent years, mostly in reference to npm packages available on the ecosystem rather than the npm registry itself. The increasing security risk, that applies to developers and software we build, makes it even more important to understand how to prevent supply chain attacks and other security vulnerabilities related to software development life cycle.
Node.js provides a single-threaded JavaScript run-time surface that prevents code from running multiple operations in parallel. If your application typically employs synchronous execution, you may encounter blocks during long-running operations. However, Node.js itself is a multi-threaded application. This is evident when you use one of the standard library’s asynchronous methods to perform I/O operations, such as reading a file or making a network request.
