CMake, which is kind of the universal standard build system for C++ now, has “fetch content” since v3.11. Put the URL of a repository (which can be remote, but also local, which is handy) and optionally the branch / commit ID that you’d like, and it will pull it into your build directory automatically. So yeah, you can pull anything nefarious that you’d like. I don’t think most people would question pulling and building a library from Github as part of the build, especially if it had a sensible name for the task at hand.
This is absolutely not just specific to Go.
That’s a pretty unique feature to Go I think. Maybe clang has something similar I guess?
Not that an attack like this is unique or anything.
CMake, which is kind of the universal standard build system for C++ now, has “fetch content” since v3.11. Put the URL of a repository (which can be remote, but also local, which is handy) and optionally the branch / commit ID that you’d like, and it will pull it into your build directory automatically. So yeah, you can pull anything nefarious that you’d like. I don’t think most people would question pulling and building a library from Github as part of the build, especially if it had a sensible name for the task at hand.
The problem isn’t specific to anything. It’s also not specific to malware. Vulnerabilities are just as dangerous, if not more so.