Node Cookbook - Third Edition

Restricting core module usage

Some core modules are very powerful, and we often depend on third-party modules that may perform powerful operations with little transparency.

This could lead to unintended vulnerabilities where user input is passed through a dependency tree that eventually leads to shell commands that could inadvertently allow for malicious input to control our server. While the chances of this happening seem rare, the implications are severe. Depending on our use case, if we can eliminate the risk, we're better off for it.

Let's write a small function that we can use to throw when a given core module is used thus allowing us to vet or at least monitor code (dependencies or otherwise) that uses the module.

To demonstrate, let's ...