List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
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Problem
Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) is a group of enhanced compile-time checks that report common coding mistakes as errors. These checks prevent the use of hard-to-secure string manipulation functions. They enforce static memory access checks, and allow only the use of range-verified string parsing functions. While these checks do not prevent every memory corruption issue by themselves, they do help reduce the likelihood.
Prevalence in npm community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
0 packages
found in
Top 1k
33 packages
found in
Top 10k
4.37k packages
in community
Next steps
It's highly recommended to enable these checks for all software components used at security boundaries, or those that process user controlled inputs.
To enable these checks, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable this feature by setting the compiler option /SDL to ON.
Problem
Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) is a group of enhanced compile-time checks that report common coding mistakes as errors, preventing them from reaching production. These checks minimize the number of security issues by enforcing strict memory access checks. They also prevent the use of hard-to-secure string and memory manipulation functions. To prove the binary has been compiled with these checks enabled, the compiler emits a special debug object. Removing the debug table eliminates this proof. Therefore, this check only applies to binaries that still have their debug tables.
Prevalence in npm community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
0 packages
found in
Top 1k
69 packages
found in
Top 10k
11.39k packages
in community
Next steps
You should keep the debug table to prove that the SDL process has been followed.
To enable these checks, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable this feature by setting the compiler option /SDL to ON.
Problem
Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) is a group of enhanced compile-time checks that report common coding mistakes as errors. These checks prevent the use of hard-to-secure memory manipulation functions. They enforce static memory access checks, and allow only the use of range-verified memory access functions. While these checks do not prevent every memory corruption issue by themselves, they do help reduce the likelihood.
Prevalence in npm community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
0 packages
found in
Top 1k
29 packages
found in
Top 10k
4.71k packages
in community
Next steps
It's highly recommended to enable these checks for all software components used at security boundaries, or those that process user controlled inputs.
To enable these checks, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable this feature by setting the compiler option /SDL to ON.
Problem
Buffer overrun protection on Linux is achieved in two ways. The most common solution is to use the stack canary (also called cookie). The stack canary is a special value written onto the stack that allows the operating system to detect and terminate the program if a stack overrun occurs. In most cases, compilers will apply the stack canary conservatively in order to avoid a negative performance impact. Therefore, stack canaries are often used together with another stack overrun mitigation - fortified functions. Fortified functions are usually wrappers around standard glibc functions (such as memcpy) which perform boundary checks either at compile time or run time to determine if a memory violation has occurred. The compiler needs additional context to generate such calls (for example, array size that needs to be known at compile time). Because of this, the compiler will virtually never substitute all viable functions with their fortified counterparts in complex programs. However, when combined with the stack canary, fortified functions provide a good measure of buffer overrun protection.
Prevalence in npm community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
1 packages
found in
Top 1k
98 packages
found in
Top 10k
12.03k packages
in community
Next steps
Presence of unfortified memory functions may indicate use of unsafe programming practices, and you should avoid it if possible.
In GCC, enable fortified functions with -fstack-protector and -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 flag, while using at least -O1 optimization level.
Problem
Software developers use programming and design knowledge to build reusable software components. Software components are the basic building blocks for modern applications. Software consumed by an enterprise consists of hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of open source components. Open source communities depend on the work of thousands of software developers that volunteer their time to maintain software components. Software developers build up the reputation of their open source projects by developing in public. Modern source code repositories have many social features that allow software developers to handle bug reports, have discussions with their users, and convey reaching significant project milestones. It is uncommon to find open source projects that omit linking their component to a publicly accessible source code repository.
Prevalence in npm community
18 packages
found in
Top 100
133 packages
found in
Top 1k
1817 packages
found in
Top 10k
2.98M packages
in community
Next steps
Check the software component behaviors for anomalies.
Consider exploratory software component testing within a sandbox environment.
Consider replacing the software component with a more widely used alternative.
Avoid using this software package until it is vetted as safe.
Problem
Control Flow Guard (CFG/CFI) protects the code flow integrity by ensuring that dynamic calls are made only to vetted functions. Trusted execution paths rely on the ability of the operating system to build a list of valid function targets. Certain functions can intentionally be disallowed to prevent malicious code from deactivating vulnerability mitigation features. A list of such invalid function targets can include publicly exported symbols. Applications that enhance control flow integrity through export suppression rely on libraries to mark their publicly visible symbols as suppressed. This is done for all symbols that are considered to be sensitive functions, and to which access should be restricted. It is considered dangerous to mix applications that perform export suppression with libraries that do not.
Prevalence in npm community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
1 packages
found in
Top 1k
69 packages
found in
Top 10k
10.9k packages
in community
Next steps
To enable this mitigation on library code, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable CFG mitigation by passing the /guard:cf parameter to the compiler and linker.
Problem
Control Flow Guard (CFG/CFI) protects the code flow integrity by ensuring that indirect calls are made only to vetted functions. This mitigation protects dynamically resolved function targets by instrumenting the code responsible for transferring execution control. Higher-level programming languages implement structured exception handling by managing their own code flow execution paths. As such, they are subject to code flow hijacking during runtime. Language-specific exception handling mitigation enforces execution integrity by instrumenting calls to manage execution context switching. Any deviation from the known and trusted code flow paths will cause the application to terminate. This makes malicious code less likely to execute.
Prevalence in npm community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
2 packages
found in
Top 1k
101 packages
found in
Top 10k
17.12k packages
in community
Next steps
It's highly recommended to enable this option for all software components used at security boundaries, or those that process user controlled inputs.
To enable this mitigation, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable CFG mitigation by passing the /guard:cf parameter to the compiler and linker.
Problem
Control Flow Guard (CFG/CFI) protects the code flow integrity by ensuring that indirect calls are made only to vetted functions. This mitigation protects dynamically resolved function targets by instrumenting the code responsible for transferring execution control. Function pointers that get resolved through import and delayed import address tables do not need to be monitored during application runtime. Instead, it is expected that modern programming language toolchains place those pointers in read-only memory locations. However, the delayed import functions are resolved as they are needed during runtime. To ensure the function pointers remain read-only, the operating system must be made aware if it is safe to re-protect the memory pages that hold them. Modern toolchains typically separate import data from other application regions for this very reason.
Prevalence in npm community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
0 packages
found in
Top 1k
42 packages
found in
Top 10k
4.87k packages
in community
Next steps
To enable this mitigation, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable CFG mitigation by passing the /guard:cf parameter to the compiler and linker.