secure-dependencies

Never run npm install in production again!

Creates a tarball of your app dependencies checked with node security platform. Just unpack it in production and you're ready to go.

Why

Even with shrinkwrap, you cannot be sure npm install in production will always deliver what you need
Running npm install is a defacto remote code execution vulnerability
Not convinced? Read this https://ponyfoo.com/articles/npm-meltdown-security-concerns
If you keep node_modules in repo and run npm rebuild you still run postinstall scripts - effectively bash commands with your user credentials and access to sudo. You can turn them off, but then some binaries will not build correctly.
Also, npm install takes more time than scp | untar

Usage

npm install secure-dependencies --save-dev

Then in your package.json scripts section you can call it

"scripts": {
  "bundle": "secure-dependencies"
},

{appname}-{version}.tgz is produced with all production dependencies unless nsp check complains.

Become left-pad proof!

shrinkwrap

secure-dependencies will follow npm-shrinkwrap.json but if you want to use it for production and not locally, you can rename it to npm-shrinkwrap-production.json and it will work for installing the module for the bundle.

What does it do?

In summary:

npm install --production
npm prune
npm dedupe
nsp check
tar

But don't trust me with your security, read the code!

Try it out

cd exampleapp
npm install
npm start

exampleapp-1.0.0.tgz is created

Get bundle name

If you're scripting your deployment with configuration managers (or bash) it's often annoying to deal with parsing package.json

secure-dependencies exposes a tiny script that generates the filename. You can use it to figure out what the bundle name is based on package.json in current directory

"scripts": {
  "bundle-name": "get-bundle-name"
},

npm install -g secure-dependencies
get-bundle-name

TODO

add paranoid mode add scp as artifact repository add deployment oneliner example

shes/secure-dependencies