User report mechanism for projects that damage other packages, don't adhere to guidelines, or are malicious

[bitfinity]

What's the problem this feature will solve?

Searching through PyPi I was not able to find anywhere where I can report a project that either contains malicious code or breaks other packages in the repository by overwriting them. To be clear, I am not talking about reporting issues to the project maintainer. This issue is not asking that PyPi duplicate the efforts of github, but as a distributor of software, PyPi needs some mechanism for consumers of the software to flag software that is malicious or may break other software.

I've come across the case of a package that overwrites another package on purpose - not for malicious intent. But that package broke my project, and uninstalling it did not fix it, because it had overwritten the other package. This is bad practice, and there should be a way to report things like this, beyond to the project maintainer. The maintainer may disagree, or may not be maintaining the project anymore.

Malicious projects: Anyone could upload a project that has malicious code buried in it, and unsuspecting developers may install this package thinking that it is "official" because it is on PyPi. There is a little bit of that expectation, since pip is part of the core python package, that packages you install via pip may be more reliable and adhere to certain standards than packages that you may install from github projects. This expectation is obviously unwarranted, but it may exist in some developers nonetheless.

That being said, there should be at least some reliable way to report or flag a project to PyPi maintainers - not the project maintainer - from the project page, and for people to see complaints about a project and judge for themselves, even if the maintainers of PyPi decide not to remove it. I found nothing.

I think there should be one issue on the pypa warehouse github that covers this, because this query has come up in the past, but gets shoved or related to other sub-issues or related issues that are already closed or more complicated.

Describe the solution you'd like

There should be one issue regarding reporting or flagging projects. It should cover these things (possibly as child issues):

1. The ability to report or flag a project from the project page.
2. The ability to see these reports. I.e. - flagged N times (as link). And then clicking on link just displays that list with the name of the reporter, the subject of the issue, maybe a category that includes "other" and a write-in category, and the text of the issue.
3. Documentation regarding both the fact that projects are not reviewed or inspected by PyPi and how to report or flag projects that are malicious, break other packages, or have some other bad practices.

[ewdurbin]

Thank you for the thorough report @bitfinity! This is planned to be part of our overall spam detection and mitigation strategy. any mechanism fulfilling #2982 would also be usable for this purpose, or we could merge the concept of spam with this.

[EmilLuta]

@nlhkabu Hi there!

Is this task still available? If you don't mind, I'd give it a shot.

[nlhkabu]

@EmilLuta I'm not sure on the status of this ticket.
@ewdurbin or @di could you please weigh in on this?

[EmilLuta]

@nlhkabu I suspect most of the job (for now) is to add a simple flag option for each repository. This way, any user can flag it. With that in mind people could have a curated list of what looks spooky and what might be used.

[di]

This issue is in-progress, sorry!

[EmilLuta]

Owkay. Thanks @di

[brainwane]

As I understand it, this is blocked on #3231.

[MartinThoma]

Would it be possible to use github (maybe not in https://github.com/pypa/warehouse but in https://github.com/pypa/pypi-support/ ?) to allow users to report malicious packages as issues?

One could make a template for this type of issue. I could imagine those fields to be interesting:

• Link to the project, e.g. https://pypi.org/project/flake8-simplify/ (just an example, it's one of my packages and definitely not malicous)
• Link to the file, e.g. https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/93/49/c3e5c9c6359bd176b9819159808c7ec0a52c002ea42c5173c57b4cf2b634/flake8_simplify-0.14.2.tar.gz
• Path within the extracted contents, e.g. flake8_simplify-0.14.2/flake8_simplify.py
• Lines within the file (if it's a text file), e.g. 123-140
• Details why this is considered malicious, e.g. CryptoLocker randomware
• Was the author contacted? : It might be that their credentials were leaked or that the reporting user just misunderstood what the code is doing

Another template could be for typosquatting.

[melroy89]

Any update on where I can fill a report/ complaint?

[di]

See https://pypi.org/security/

[melroy89]

I want to file a complaint not a security issue. In my case specifically there are other users duplicating my work and releasing it under another pypi package, while not honoring the copyright owners/authors being mentioned. Which is not inline with the Apache License 2.0.

EDIT: I know where to report this. You can report such things at: https://github.com/pypa/pypi-support/issues

[eirnym]

do we all expect, that all packages can be installed simultaniously and won't break each other? I understand the original issue, but what if I name my package differently, and name python packages the same as an other random package, my package is flagged or other package is flagged? I see no mechanism to detect and solve the problem peacefully. Other problem is "I like the package, but it's not maintainted for years and has an important issue and I still need to use the first one (as a part of contract with other packages) and want to fix the issue"?

[soxofaan]

Another use case that could be covered here: https://pypi.org/project/pyrasite/ . The original maintainer has lost interest in this project I guess, and has lost ownership of the project's homepage domain (pyrasite dot com) , which now turned in a phishing/malware rabbit hole (see lmacken/pyrasite#151 lmacken/pyrasite#145).
As a result, https://pypi.org/project/pyrasite/ is full of malicious links. So while the package itself isn't malicious per se, it would be good if there was some mechanism to avoid interested users blindly clicking these links.