Universal Action to rotate NPM keys

[RafaelGSS]

Hi folks,

I'm opening this issue just to get more attention from the express side. I opened fastify/fastify#5984 to discuss a feasible approach to rotate npm keys across many repositories of an organization, and I believe the same problem we are facing on fastify would happen here.

@UlisesGascon has mentioned you all would be working on something similar soon, so I thought I could help and we could create something more universal. Where can I get more info about this initiative?

[wesleytodd]

I think the main thing we need to work out is the automated release workflows. This is what @sheplu will be working on as part of our STF funding this year. I have pretty strong opinions on this but probably not yet the time for me to write it up here. I will jot down some basic requirements I think we have though.

1. 2FA support. This is the main thing lacking in the vanilla GHA publish workflows. There is the step-security stuff for this, but I have been hesitant to rely on a 3rd party company for this. Maybe that is an ideal worth giving up on so we can have 2FA?
2. Release via PR. Each release needs a PR we can review with strong merge restrictions. Ideally this would include generated changelogs and GH releases.
3. Monorepo support. This one might be considered a "nice to have", but I strongly believe there are some domains of this project which would have benefited from a small monorepo setup. I would not like our release workflow to be a blocker for how we structure the code in the repos.

[RafaelGSS]

Thanks for the summary @wesleytodd. @sheplu happy to discuss this with you!

[elliot-huffman]

What level of engagement would you like from me here?

I can assist with the below security items:

• MFA enforcement of the build pipeline.
• Supply chain risk reduction.
• Build automation.
• Cryptographic attestation.
• Code signatures.

I am personally invested in the security of this project as Express.JS is a critical supply chain item for my projects/apps.

[wesleytodd]

Thanks for the offer @elliot-huffman! We will be putting together plans in the coming weeks afaik and am sure there will be things which can be helped with. I would suggest starting with finding and engaging in the many existing discussions in our repos and finding where there are already opportunities to contribute, then engaging in a discussion in our Slack (on the OpenJS Slack workspace). As much of this work is funded by the STF I believe there will be more structure around the work than normal so that it can all be reported correctly, so make sure to sync with @sheplu on it as he is leading that milestone.

[bjohansebas]

Most likely related nodejs/package-maintenance#244 and nodejs/package-maintenance#282