Zero Trust Supply Chain: Why I Don't Trust Any Dependency Anymore

Three major attacks this year changed everything: s1ngularity compromised the Nx build system exposing thousands of credentials, Shai-Hulud became the first self-replicating npm worm spreading across 500+ packages, and Qix showed how social engineering can weaponize trusted maintainer accounts. These attacks represent a fundamental shift in how adversaries target software supply chains.

Modern software development is 80-90% dependency management. We've outsourced our problems to strangers on the internet - each npm package represents a potential attack vector maintained by developers we've never met, following security practices we can't verify. Traditional "scan and trust" security models are now dangerous.

Why Traditional Security Fails

Current approaches assume known vulnerabilities are the primary threat. This fails catastrophically when attacks exploit trust relationships and legitimate infrastructure rather than CVEs. The Qix attack's malicious packages were live for only two hours - periodic scanners would miss this entirely.

These attacks share common patterns: they target AI development tools (s1ngularity used flags like dangerously-skip-permissions), create self-propagating feedback loops (Shai-Hulud), and abuse social trust (Qix phishing). Most critically, they function as legitimate packages while executing hidden payloads, bypassing traditional CVE-based scanners.

Zero Trust for Open Source

Zero trust originated in network security but applies perfectly to supply chains: never trust, always verify. Traditional security assumes internal resources are trustworthy and external threats are the problem. Zero trust flips this - assume everything is compromised, verify everything continuously.

For dependencies, this means treating every npm package like a potential threat actor. That helpful utility library? Verify its maintainer history, check its network behavior, monitor its code changes. That framework everyone uses? Assume it could be compromised tomorrow and have detection ready. It's like online dating, but for code - everyone looks trustworthy in their profile, but you still need to do a background check.

The mental shift is crucial: move from "this package is probably safe" to "this package is definitely dangerous until I prove otherwise." It's paranoid by design, because modern supply chain attacks exploit our trust, not our technical vulnerabilities.

How Endor Labs Enables Zero Trust

At Endor Labs, we've built our platform around five core principles that fundamentally change how organizations consume open source:

Default Deny: No open source package enters your build without explicit approval and risk assessment. Unlike traditional approaches that allow packages by default and scan for problems later, our platform requires every dependency to pass security, maintenance, and business criteria before integration. This prevents malicious packages from entering your supply chain in the first place.

Continuous Verification: We don't just scan once - we continuously monitor dependencies against evolving risks, tracking over 150 risk factors including maintainer behavior, package health, security posture, and community signals. A package that was safe yesterday might be compromised today through maintainer account takeover, so continuous monitoring is essential.

Least Privilege: Our intelligent dependency analysis helps organizations use only necessary dependencies and minimize package access. We identify unused dependencies, suggest alternatives with smaller attack surfaces, and help teams understand what permissions and capabilities each package actually requires.

Assume Compromise: We operate under the assumption that compromise is inevitable and provide predefined remediation paths for when packages are compromised. This includes automated blocking of known malicious packages, rollback capabilities, and incident response workflows that activate when threats are detected.

Visibility and Provenance: Our high-fidelity code scanning maintains complete transparency into package origins, maintainers, build processes, and distribution chains. We verify cryptographic signatures, track maintainer identities, and ensure packages actually come from their claimed sources without tampering.

Our platform implements these principles through Open Policy Agent (OPA) for granular policy controls, behavioral analysis for runtime monitoring, and advanced malicious code detection. We integrate directly into development workflows - IDEs, CI/CD pipelines, deployment systems - providing security feedback without friction.

The Business Case for Zero Trust

The s1ngularity attack alone forced affected organizations to revoke and regenerate over 1,000 GitHub tokens and dozens of cloud credentials. This remediation effort consumed weeks of engineering time, disrupted development workflows, and cost millions in lost productivity. One compromised package can cascade into enterprise-wide incident response.

Beyond immediate costs, regulatory pressure is mounting. The EU's Cyber Resilience Act now mandates supply chain transparency. CISA's Secure Software Development Framework requires SBOM generation and dependency verification. Organizations without zero trust implementations face compliance gaps that translate to legal liability and market access restrictions.

Customer trust is becoming a competitive advantage. Enterprise buyers increasingly audit vendor security practices before procurement decisions. Companies demonstrating mature supply chain security win deals that competitors with "hope-based" security models lose. Zero trust implementations become sales differentiators, not just security controls.

The math is stark: proactive zero trust investment costs thousands, reactive breach response costs millions. Organizations that experience supply chain compromises face remediation expenses, regulatory penalties, customer compensation, legal fees, and reputational damage that can exceed the cost of prevention by orders of magnitude.

What's Next

The threat landscape is accelerating. Self-propagating attacks like Shai-Hulud represent just the beginning - imagine AI-powered malware that writes its own variants, or attacks that target multiple programming ecosystems simultaneously. Traditional incident response, designed for discrete events, becomes useless against threats that spread faster than humans can coordinate.

Package repositories like npm, PyPI, and Maven Central have become critical infrastructure supporting millions of developers globally, yet they operate with minimal security oversight. A successful attack on these platforms could cripple software development worldwide within hours.

Meanwhile, AI coding assistants are becoming primary targets. As more developers rely on tools like Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, and others, attackers are developing sophisticated techniques to manipulate these systems. The s1ngularity attack's targeting of AI tools was just a preview of what's coming.

Organizations can't wait for the next major breach to act. The choice facing every development team is stark: implement zero trust principles now while you control the timeline, or implement them later during a crisis when attackers control the timeline. The tools exist, the threats are real, and the window for proactive defense is shrinking.

Further Reading

Important Read: For a deeper dive into implementing zero trust for software supply chains, I highly recommend Varun Badhwar (CEO & Founder of Endor Labs)'s comprehensive analysis on zero trust for open source. His perspective on enterprise implementation strategies complements the technical analysis presented here.

Also Worth Reading: Jenn Gile (VP of Product at Endor Labs)'s excellent piece on taking malware seriously in the supply chain provides crucial context on why attackers are increasingly focusing on supply chain vectors.

Conclusion

Three attacks changed everything: s1ngularity proved our build systems are vulnerable, Shai-Hulud showed how attacks can self-propagate across ecosystems, and Qix demonstrated that social engineering can weaponize our most trusted maintainers. These weren't isolated incidents - they're the new normal.

The old model of "scan and trust" is dead. We've built our entire development ecosystem on faith in strangers, and attackers are systematically exploiting that trust. Zero trust for open source isn't paranoia - it's realism.

Organizations now face a choice: continue crossing your fingers and hoping malicious packages don't slip through, or adopt zero trust principles and actually verify what you're shipping. The attacks of 2025 have shown us the cost of wishful thinking. Time to embrace paranoid engineering.

References:

• https://www.endorlabs.com/learn/nx-build-platform-compromised-by-supply-chain-attack---how-attackers-collude-with-ai-code-assistants
• https://www.endorlabs.com/learn/major-supply-chain-attack-compromises-popular-npm-packages-including-chalk-and-debug
• https://www.endorlabs.com/learn/npm-malware-outbreak-tinycolor-and-crowdstrike-packages-compromised
• https://www.endorlabs.com/learn/zero-trust-for-open-source-why-enterprises-need-a-new-appsec-playbook
• https://www.endorlabs.com/learn/its-time-to-take-malware-seriously-attackers-do