Using socket.dev is one way!

As for writing such a check manually, you would just need to check "bin" in */package.json after installing everything, and verify each script.

Trusting a big company seems to be another suggestion I see in this thread too. I don't agree with that one.

My employer uses artifactory as a mirror of npm and one step of adding a package to the mirror is installing it on a VM/container with no network access. If the package has a "postinstall" script requiring internet access then it will fail. There's also code scanning that will find at least casual attacks like "download and run this crypto ransomware".

I think the idea MS has deployed this is over optimistic. Look at this with Google. https://giraffesecurity.dev/posts/google-remote-code-executi...

Also, it depends how determined your attacker is. If they write code to detect whether they're being installed in the vscode project, have access to commercially available security scanning tools to ensure they evade detection, etc...