Except there is lots to gain from being the first to write about the new malware on some registry, so companies are actively downloading and inspecting literally every package.
Back in the day (maybe 6-7 years ago?) you could detect this by uploading a new npm package that hit back some endpoint in your control, and it was almost guaranteed that this endpoint got a request within a minute of publishing a new package or update to existing one with users. Nowadays I think none of the scanners actually run the code, mostly static-analysis, and I dunno how often the npm download counter updates per day, probably harder to see in real-time.
Show me the company writing to their customers “we intentionally decided to ship code with potentially novel vulnerabilities. One of those vulnerabilities caused disclosure of your data, but cheer up! We have this cool security blog post about it now.” Meanwhile their competitors freeride and their customers’ data is safe.
> there is lots to gain from being the first to write about the new malware on some registry, so *companies* are actively downloading and inspecting literally every package.
(Emphasis mine)
we are.
"companies" in this context is "security companies" (hence why they are "downloading and inspecting every package", which would not make sense if referring to the people authoring and shipping a single package)