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AI Security

Interview question · Software, Data & Model Supply Chain

A self-spreading worm is publishing malicious versions of packages you depend on. How do you respond?

Shai-Hulud showed that a stolen publishing token can turn one compromised maintainer into hundreds of poisoned packages within hours. The response is part incident handling, part credential hygiene, and the prevention lives in your CI.

hardEssentialNewPreparation tags: Google, Microsoft, AmazonUpdated Nov 2026

Shai-Hulud showed that a stolen publishing token can turn one compromised maintainer into hundreds of poisoned packages within hours. The response is part incident handling, part credential hygiene, and the prevention lives in your CI.

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What would you say before reading the answer?

  1. 01 State the assumptions your answer depends on.
  2. 02 Explain the mechanism and choose a control.
  3. 03 Name a condition that would change your decision.

The worked answer includes an approach, scoring criteria and follow-up questions. Compare the reasoning with your own.

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What if · the follow-ups in this answer

The answer works through 5 follow-ups like an interviewer would

A popular npm utility your front-end depends on has malicious versions published by a self-spreading worm. The versions were live for about six hours yesterday. You have 200 repositories, CI on GitHub Actions and an internal registry proxy.

  1. How do you know whether you are affected?
  2. Three CI runners installed it. What do you rotate?
  3. What if your company publishes packages from those runners?
  4. Which single change would have prevented the CI exposure?
  5. What prevention programme do you put in place?

Each rung has a nudge, a model answer, the principle that carries over and the weak answer to avoid. Premium opens every answer and ladder.

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