Spectra Assure
Community
warningRisk: Hardening
Scanned: 15 days ago

Google.ProtocolBuffers

latest
Top 10k
Protocol Buffers is a binary serialization format and technology, released to the open source community by Google in 2008. Its primary use is to produce small fast binary representations of a 'message' or object for serialization or transportation. There are various implementations of Protocol Buffers in .NET. This project is a fairly close port of the Google Java implementation. There are two main parts: tools/protoc.exe, which takes the textual representation of the protocol buffer and turns it into a binary representation for use with ProtoGen.exe. tools/ProtoGen.exe, which takes binary representations of protocol buffer descriptors (as generated by the "stock" protoc binary supplied by Google) and creates C# source code. This is only required at build time. lib/*/Google.ProtocolBuffers.dll, which is a supporting library. This is required at execution time. lib/*/Google.ProtocolBuffers.Serialization.dll, a supplementary library that provides extensions for reading and writing protocol buffers to xml, json, and others. LINKS: Project Home - http://code.google.com/p/protobuf-csharp-port Online Help - http://help.protobuffers.net Developer Guide - http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/overview.html Language Guide - http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/docs/proto.html
License: unknown
Published: almost 11 years ago
See on NuGet

SAFE Assessment

Compliance

Licenses
No license compliance issues
Secrets
No sensitive information found

Security

Vulnerabilities
No known vulnerabilities detected
Hardening
2 baseline mitigations missing

Threats

Tampering
No evidence of software tampering
Malware
No evidence of malware inclusion
List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
Policies
Info
Category

Problem

Data Execution Prevention (DEP/NX) is a vulnerability mitigation option that prevents data from being interpreted as code anywhere within the application. This mitigation protects the application stack, heap and other memory data ranges. Executable files that fail to implement this mitigation expose the user to increased risks of malicious code injection.

Prevalence in NuGet community

0 packages
found in
Top 100
4 packages
found in
Top 1k
27 packages
found in
Top 10k
5.91k 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 linker documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable DEP mitigation by setting the linker option /NXCOMPAT to ON.

Problem

Sensitive executable memory regions should be kept as read-only to protect the integrity of trusted execution code flow paths. Imported function addresses are pointers to the symbols that implement the application-required functionality. If those pointers are changed by malicious code, execution paths can be redirected to unintended locations. Most modern programming language toolchains protect those memory regions appropriately. These issues are commonly reported for outdated linkers and non-compliant executable packing solutions.

Prevalence in NuGet community

0 packages
found in
Top 100
2 packages
found in
Top 1k
12 packages
found in
Top 10k
3.64k packages
in community

Next steps

Review the programming language linker options, and consider a build toolchain update.

Problem

Sensitive executable memory regions should be kept as read-only to protect the integrity of trusted execution code flow paths. Thread local storage (TLS) callbacks are pointers to code initialization and resource release functions. If those pointers are changed by malicious code, execution paths can be redirected to unintended locations. Most modern programming language toolchains protect those memory regions appropriately. These issues are commonly reported for outdated linkers and non-compliant executable packing solutions.

Prevalence in NuGet community

0 packages
found in
Top 100
1 packages
found in
Top 1k
11 packages
found in
Top 10k
2.27k packages
in community

Next steps

Review the programming language linker options, and consider a build toolchain update.

Problem

Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) is a vulnerability mitigation option that forces software components to load on a different memory base address each time they are used. This makes the memory layout unpredictable, and it is therefore harder for malicious code to be reliably injected during application runtime.

Prevalence in NuGet community

0 packages
found in
Top 100
1 packages
found in
Top 1k
10 packages
found in
Top 10k
1.17k 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. For best results, use ASLR together with Data Execution Prevention (DEP/NX).
To enable this mitigation, refer to your programming language linker documentation.
In Microsoft VisualStudio, you can enable ASLR mitigation by setting the linker option /DYNAMICBASE to ON.

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 NuGet community

No prevalence information at this time

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 indirect calls are made only to vetted functions. This mitigation protects dynamically resolved function targets by instrumenting the code responsible for transferring execution control. Because the code flow integrity is verified during runtime, malicious code is less likely to be able to hijack trusted execution paths.

Prevalence in NuGet community

0 packages
found in
Top 100
2 packages
found in
Top 1k
38 packages
found in
Top 10k
9.4k 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

Digital signatures are applied to applications, packages and documents as a cryptographically secured authenticity record. Signatures verify the origin and the integrity of the object they apply to. The integrity validation relies on the cryptographic strength of the encryption and the hash verification algorithm. If either of the two is considered weak by current standards, there is a chance the signed object could be maliciously modified, without triggering the integrity failure check.

Prevalence in NuGet community

0 packages
found in
Top 100
38 packages
found in
Top 1k
315 packages
found in
Top 10k
733.24k packages
in community

Next steps

Create signatures with strong ECC key-length of at least 224 bits, or RSA key-length of at least 2048 bits, and use SHA256 as the hashing algorithm. While encryption key-length upgrade does require you to obtain a new certificate, the hashing algorithm can freely be selected during signing.
With Microsoft SignTool, you can specify the hashing algorithm using the /fd SHA256 parameter.

Problem

Digital signatures are applied to applications, packages and documents as a cryptographically secured authenticity record. Signatures are made using digital certificates, which can either be purchased from certificate authorities or be self-issued. When a certificate is purchased from a certificate authority, the subject that requests it goes through an identity validation process. Depending on the certificate type, those checks can be basic or extended. Confirming the subject identity is a multi-step process, and the requesting subject can be mapped to its legal entity name only through extended validation of submitted documents. Extended identity validation typically costs more, and it takes longer for a certificate to be issued when this process is correctly followed.

Prevalence in NuGet community

0 packages
found in
Top 100
27 packages
found in
Top 1k
292 packages
found in
Top 10k
732.23k packages
in community

Next steps

Consider the benefits of acquiring extended validation certificates. Operating systems tend to be more trusting of software packages signed in this way. Certain security warnings and prompts might also be automatically suppressed. This reduces the number of support tickets for organizations that opt to use extended validation certificates.

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