On PerlMonks, on many SOPWs I have written I have placed "no CPAN please" in them. The community then responds to me with a boilerplate "you too can install CPAN modules". I've been wondering if there is any logic to my "no CPAN" requirements that I have been putting up for 13 years on PerlMonks.

Scenario one, with CPANTesters and other people who automatically build modules, and the fact that PAUSE tarballs are unmoderated, has anyone ever been caught in the 17 year history of CPAN releasing a benign module with a rootkit, backdoor, virus, or "calling home"?

Scenario two, has anyone released a truly malicious module without any POD or any redeeming qualities that will attempt to trash the system when its Makefile.pl is run automatically by CPANTesters?

And scenario 3, if someone did release a tarball with a kernel privilege escalation exploit in it, what will CPAN, PAUSE, and Perl community do? and to what degree will that tarball be scrubbed off the internet?

Before you ask what is my mission, I proclaim that I have been sent here on an edict from the House of PHP to proselytize all you heathens to the salvation of my Most Honorable Lord Phalanger.

In reply to Malware on CPAN by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.