PyPI suspends new projects and users due to malicious activity

The PyPI (Python Package Index) team has temporarily suspended new projects and users on their platform due to malicious activity.

This surge in malicious activity aligns with a larger trend observed across several open-source registries in recent months. Notably, incidents such as the flood of malicious packages on the NPM JavaScript package manager and a similar attack on the Nuget package manager last year, involving over 140,000 malicious packages, have highlighted the...

22 May 2023 | Hacking & Security

PyPI will sell ‘Organization’ accounts to corporate projects

Python Packaging Index (PyPI) has announced the introduction of ‘Organization’ accounts, as the first step in its plan to build financial support and long-term sustainability.

Organizations on PyPI are self-managed teams with exclusive branded web addresses. PyPI aims to make its platform easier to use for large community projects, organisations, or companies that manage multiple sub-teams and packages.

Notably, community projects can access the new accounts for...

24 April 2023 | Developer

Clipper malware found in over 451 PyPI packages

Phylum security researchers have discovered over 451 packages on the Python Package Index (PyPI) that are infected with “clipper” malware.

Clippers replace the contents of a victim’s clipboard with something which benefits the attacker. The most prevalent clippers today look for cryptocurrency addresses and modify them to steal funds.

Starting on February 9th, Phylum was alerted by its automated risk detection platform to a long series of suspicious publications to...

15 February 2023 | Hacking & Security

The most in-demand programming languages for 2023

Coding Dojo has released its list of the most in-demand programming languages for this year.

The list uses the number of open full-time jobs to determine the skills that employers are desperately looking for.

Notably, the top three most in-demand languages have been shaken up. Likely driven by the demand for machine learning solutions, Python is now in the top spot.

Here are the top 10 programming languages by open full-time positions and their ranking change...

8 February 2023 | Developer

Malware campaign targets official Python and JavaScript repos

An active malware campaign is targeting official Python and JavaScript repositories.

Software supply chain security firm Phylum spotted the campaign. Phylum said that it discovered the campaign after noticing a flurry of activity around typosquats of the popular Python requests package.

Typosquats take advantage of simple typos to install malicious packages.

In this case, the PyPI typos include: dequests, fequests, gequests, rdquests, reauests, reduests,...

13 December 2022 | Hacking & Security

TIOBE: C++ overtakes Java in programming language popularity

According to the latest TIOBE Index, C++ has overtaken Java in programming language popularity.

The TIOBE Index uses searches across 25 different engines to calculate the popularity of Turing-complete languages. The methodology used for the index has regularly been criticised but it suffices as a rough guide.

Java has been a mainstay in the top three programming languages since the TIOBE Index launched in 2001. However, that impressive streak came to an end this...

12 December 2022 | Java

PyPI maintainers warn of ongoing phishing attack

The maintainers of the Python Package Index (PyPI) have warned of an ongoing phishing attack targeting users.

“Today we received reports of a phishing campaign targeting PyPI users. This is the first known phishing attack against PyPI,” wrote the maintainers in a tweet.

A phishing email is sent to users warning that PyPI is implementing a mandatory ‘validation’ process and that users must follow a link or risk their package being removed:

The...

25 August 2022 | Hacking & Security

PyPI package installs cryptominer on Linux systems

A malicious PyPI package was used to install a Monero cryptominer on Linux systems.

The package in question, secretslib, was pushed to the official third-party software repo for Python on 6th August 2022. The package was described as “secrets matching and verification made easy”.

Sonatype’s automated malware detection system flagged secretslib as potentially malicious. Further analysis proved its suspicions to be correct.

“The package covertly runs...

15 August 2022 | Hacking & Security

Snowflake boosts native python support and data access

A green tree python.

Snowflake, the Data Cloud company, has unveiled new enhancements that improve programmability for data scientists, data engineers, and application developers

The company announced the update this week at its annual user conference, Snowflake Summit 2022, in Las Vegas.

Snowflake’s latest innovations bring Python to the forefront, with the launch of Snowpark for Python, now in public preview, and a native integration with Streamlit for rapid application development and...

15 June 2022 | Developer

Déjà vu: Python wins TIOBE Programming Language of the Year

According to TIOBE, Python was the programming language that stole developers’ hearts in 2021.

It’s the second time in a row that Python has been crowned the TIOBE Programming Language of the Year.

Last month, TIOBE Software CEO Paul Jansen floated the possibility that C# may take the crown for the first time after posting the highest rating growth (+2.21%) in the top 20 of the TIOBE Index in December.

"It is interesting to note that C# has never won the...

4 January 2022 | Languages