Netherеum.All

Problem

Potentially unwanted applications (PUAs) can be considered a risk by some software users. This threat type typically collects private user data, or in more extreme cases, tampers with system security settings. Most threat prevention solutions detect and block PUAs. Software packages that trigger security solution detections also tend to increase the number of support calls and open tickets from users.

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. Software developers publish components they have authored to public repositories. Open source projects are the intellectual property of their respective authors. At any time, the authors may choose to completely remove the software component from a public repository. This often occurs when a software project reaches its end-of-life stage, or when the software authors lose interest in maintaining the project. This kind of removal frees up the software package name, its unique software identifier in the public repository, for other developers to use. However, new software project owners might have malicious intent. Threat actors are continuously monitoring popular package names in case their unique identifiers suddenly become available for hijacking. Once the software projects falls under new ownership, the new maintainers may opt to use the project popularity to spread malware to unsuspecting users.

Prevalence in NuGet community

No prevalence information at this time

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. Software developers publish components they have authored to public repositories. While a new software project is a welcome addition to the open source community, it is not always prudent to indiscriminately use the latest components when building a commercial application. Irrespective of the software quality, the danger of being the first to try out a new project lies in the fact that the software component may contain novel, currently undetected malicious code. Therefore, it is prudent to review software component behaviors and even try out software component in a sandbox, an environment meant for testing untrusted code.

Prevalence in NuGet community

No prevalence information at this time

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. Software developers publish components they have authored to public repositories. While a new software project is a welcome addition to the open source community. it is not always prudent to indiscriminately use the latest components when building a commercial application. Irrespective of the software quality, the danger of using components that are rarely used to build applications lies in the fact that the software component may contain novel, currently undetected malicious code. Therefore, it is prudent to review software component behaviors and even try out software component in a sandbox, an environment meant for testing untrusted code.

Prevalence in NuGet community

No prevalence information at this time

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

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.

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.