The next detection idea,
proven before it ships.
R&D is where we prototype the ideas that aren't product yet: we build them, run them against real attacks, and show the evidence rather than the pitch. First out of the lab is PoisonBox.
PoisonBox
See what a package really does at install time. PoisonBox runs every package's install script inside a throwaway virtual machine, records every system call it makes, and shows you what it touched. If it reads your SSH key and phones home, you watch it happen somewhere it can't reach the real one.
Three packages, one sandbox, three fates
Reads its own manifest, writes a build cache, exits. No secret touched, no socket opened.
Reads your ~/.npmrc auth token and runs a shell step, but never phones home. Grey, not damning.
Steals the SSH key, npm token and AWS creds, then connects to a non-registry host. Caught mid-theft.
Every capture is real telemetry from a real sandbox run, not a mock-up. That's the rule: only real captures ship.
The dangerous part of a package runs before you've read a line of it.
Install scripts run the moment you add a dependency, with your shell's privileges, before review and before you import anything. That's how ua-parser-js shipped a credential stealer to millions in 2021, and how event-stream and the polyfill.io hijack got in. A freshly poisoned version has no CVE yet, so a vulnerability scanner waves it straight through. PoisonBox assumes the install itself is hostile, and gives it a room with no windows.
Run the package. Watch it from underneath. Score what it did.
Isolate
Every install runs in its own disposable microVM with hardware-level isolation. It boots, does its worst, and is deleted. Nothing it does reaches your machine or your keys.
Observe
A kernel-level eBPF probe records every process spawned, file opened, secret read and outbound connection, from beneath the code, so there is nothing the package can do to avoid being seen.
Diff
PoisonBox compares what the package did against what a well-behaved install should do, and marks the deviations, drawing the causal thread from a secret read to the connection that carried it.
Verdict
One risk score where every point links back to the exact event that earned it. Clean, review or blocked, with the evidence one click away. No black box.
How something gets out of the lab.
R&D isn't a graveyard for demos. A project earns each step by working, not by looking finished.
Prototype
An idea gets built far enough to run against real attacks and produce evidence we can stand behind.
Shown here
It lands on this page and gets its own home, with the captures on display. PoisonBox is here now.
Into OSPulse
What proves itself graduates into the product, wired into the same estate view as everything else.
PoisonBox is the first out of the lab, not the last. When the next one's ready to show, it'll be here.
Want in early?
PoisonBox is a research build, not something you can buy yet. If install-time attacks are on your mind, tell us and we'll bring you in early.