List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
category ALL
Policies
Info
Category
Problem
Diligent software developers audit the source code of a component before it gets included in the software project. This audit often includes reviewing key pieces of code hosted in a public source repository. Aiming to avoid detection through spot-checks, attackers often hide malicious payloads by placing the code outside the common screen width. Depending on how the code editor used for review is configured, the malicious code might never be shown to the developer during the audit. Since many programming languages allow multiple statements to be made in the same line of code, both visible and off-screen code will be executed. While presence of code outside the common screen width does not imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. When a software package has behavior traits similar to malicious software, it may become flagged by security solutions.
Prevalence in npm community
1 packages
found in
Top 100
23 packages
found in
Top 1k
123 packages
found in
Top 10k
16.38k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.
Consult Mitre ATT&CK documentation: T1027 - Obfuscated Files or Information.
Consider rewriting the flagged code without using the marked behaviors.