How is it flawed? If the intent is to investigate Linux packages isn't the repositories of Linux distributions the best place to study?
Debian for example packages PyPi packages and the maintainer could introduce a backdoor in the version provided by Debian. Only focusing on PyPi wouldn't catch that case.
To their credit they do declare their affiliation to Chainguard on the first page of the paper. (It's half the authors of the paper for those who don't want to read)
Packj detects malicious PyPI/NPM/Ruby/PHP/etc. dependencies using behavioral analysis. It uses static+dynamic code analysis to scan for indicators of compromise (e.g., spawning of shell, use of SSH keys, network communication, use of decode+eval, etc). It also checks for several metadata attributes to detect bad actors (e.g., typo squatting).
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[ 467 ms ] story [ 771 ms ] threadIt would make more sense to study and interview package management systems like PyPy and Nuget instead.
Are researching PyPy and Pip and Nuget and VSCode Extensions and AI pickle models all exclusive?
Debian for example packages PyPi packages and the maintainer could introduce a backdoor in the version provided by Debian. Only focusing on PyPi wouldn't catch that case.
Seems like several authors are affiliated with Chainguard that created Wolfi.
1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj
Packj detects malicious PyPI/NPM/Ruby/PHP/etc. dependencies using behavioral analysis. It uses static+dynamic code analysis to scan for indicators of compromise (e.g., spawning of shell, use of SSH keys, network communication, use of decode+eval, etc). It also checks for several metadata attributes to detect bad actors (e.g., typo squatting).