Lavamoat-core NPM

LavaMoat

NOTE: under rapid develop, not ready for production use, has not been audited, etc

LavaMoat is a set of tools for securing JavaScript projects against a category of hacks called software supply chain attacks.

This genre of attack occurs when a malicious dependency makes it way into a developer's application. An attacker could use the vulerable dependency to then steal important secrets like credit card numbers, private keys, or personal data.

These attacks have already hit the cryptocurrency ecosystem and present a significant risk for the developers and users of wallets and apps.

In order to help mitigate the risk of such an attack we are building a suite of tools that range from plugins for common app bundlers (eg webpack, browserify) to dependecy analysis and visualization tools.

The goal of LavaMoat is to bring added protections to modern JavaScript apps without having to rewrite them from scratch and automate a good first-start security configuration.

Watch the introduction video

How it works

The LavaMoat runtime reduces the supplychain risk in three primary ways: 1. Prevent modifying JavaScript's primordials (Object, String, Number, Array, ...) 2. Limit access to the platform API (window, document, XHR, etc) per-package 3. Prevent packages from corrupting other packages

1 and 2 are provided by SES containers. Platform API access is passed in via a LavaMoat configuration file.

3 is achieved by providing a unique mutable copy of the imported module's exports. Mutating the module's copy of the exports does not affect other modules.

SecureEcmaScript (SES)

SES is the sandbox used in LavaMoat. See SES's secure computing guide to learn more about the risks of untrusted javascript.

LavaMoat in the browser

When using LavaMoat in the browser, you can just use your favorite bundler if there is an available plugin.

App bundles have two major components:

Runtime (aka kernel / loader / prelude / trusted computing base) This is the code that initializes and runs the bundle. For example, the implementation of the require function.
Module sources This includes the js content of the module sources, and sometimes some config information like module name alaises.

LavaMoat modifies the bundle's runtime to enforce the configured constraints.