Re:You either die an MVP or live long enough to build conten...
by shakna on Wednesday September 29, 2021 @08:04AM
(#28692571)
> I'm sure they've built very sophisticated filtering tools, but imagine someone slips through the cracks and gets a cryptominer working.
It's been done, multiple times. Here's a handful (96) of documented cases which are somewhat recent. [0][1]
It seems to be surprisingly easy to abuse the process, and GitHub are continually playing catch up.
[0] https://dev.to/thibaultduponchelle/the-github-action-mining-...
[1] https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/github-action...
Frankly, I'm shocked the other major free providers (GitHub/Lab) haven't done this by default. GitHub's current default is free for public branches, and a small fee for private.
I could see a flipped setup working: by default a very small fee (1-5 cents per x number of batches) that most companies wouldn't notice, and a path for FOSS projects to apply for credits.
I can't find the direct link, but I remember someone on HN pointing out that because CI tools are turing complete, GitHub actions is the cheapest serverless cloud product in the world right now -- you just need to figure out how to game the system.
I'm sure they've built very sophisticated filtering tools, but imagine someone slips through the cracks and gets a cryptominer working. Get that action registered in enough projects (by, say embedding it in an Actions library or generator tool) and that could be significant.