Dead Evil: A Software Supply Chain Possession

Deep in the woods, where trees are black and the air is thick, steam rises wistfully across the damp ground. A single dirt track, barely wide enough to pass, scars the terrain for what seems like an endless number of miles. It winds its way through the mountains and valleys, across a rickety bridge over a cavernous ravine, before plunging back into darkness, the trees bending over as if to grasp those passing through. Finally, in a small clearing, a lonely decrepit wooden cabin reveals itself.

The cabin sits unobtrusively in its setting, a small ranch porch makes it almost look inviting. The surrounding trees sway and creak in the wind as if whispering a foreboding message of warning. Evil lurks all around it.

But it is deep within that the problem lies.

In the rotting floor, a trap door reveals a rickety staircase which leads ominously down into the blackness below. A single candle is enough to illuminate a narrow claustrophobic path, deep into the tight bowels of the cellar. The stale air is suffocating. Down the passage, through an opening in the rock-built foundations, a small room houses an old oak desk sitting dusty and alone. The world has forgotten it. In the bottom drawer, locked with a key long lost, is a book wrapped in a thick, almost rigid cloth. Within this book are the incantations to unlock a devastating demonic possession.

A public software repository is the cabin. The book is the dependency you're not tracking. The aimless, unwitting temporary residents are the developers and processes used to build your software supply chain. Without knowledge. Without protection. Bad things will happen.

And without realizing it, the incantations are spoken, and the demonic possession is unleashed. You’ve opened a door, a conduit to another place. A scary and unrelenting place. Filled with demons that want your soul. And a vessel to infect the rest of your world. A host to do terrible, horrible things. Things that no one wants or expects. Control is lost.

So fire up the chainsaw and load your shotgun… tackle the demons head on.

Be Ash. Not Linda.

Or better yet. Be smart and just don’t open the Necronomicon.

“Groovy.”

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