Protestware

Commenting on the malicious code added to the “Vue-cli” application, GitHub user “nm17” said a continued expansion of protestware would erode public trust in open-source software.

In January, two other popular modules called colors and faker were intentionally sabotaged by their maintainer. Is protestware going to become a common problem?

In fact, what we've seen over the last week is something called “protestware”, and that is some damaging and non-damaging code put into open source projects, specifically focused on organizations in Russia and Belarus. Now, they are making a statement, and that falls under what we call “hacktivism”.

developers and project maintainers themselves sometimes engage in this activity as a form of protest or advocacy for their beliefs. This form of hijacking, often referred to as protestware is a concerning trend because it can be difficult for an organisation to recognise it before it’s too late.

The roots of protestware date back to the early days of computing. However, recent events in the Russo-Ukrainian war has^([sic]) sparked a new wave of protestware.