SqzrFramework480

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 license is a legal instrument that governs the use and distribution of software source code and its binary representation. Software publishers have the freedom to choose any commonly used or purposefully written license to publish their work under. While some licenses are liberal and allow almost any kind of distribution, with or without code modification, other licenses are more restrictive and impose rules for their inclusion in other software projects. Some software licenses place restrictions on commercial use of the code they apply to. The most restrictive licenses in this category may completely forbid commercial code use. When building commercial applications, this is typically undesirable. Therefore, the inclusion of any code that may impose limits on commercial use is commonly avoided or even prohibited by the organization policy.

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

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.

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.

Problem

Software components contain executable code that performs actions implemented during its development. These actions are called behaviors. In the analysis report, behaviors are presented as human-readable descriptions that best match the underlying code intent. While most behaviors are benign, some are commonly abused by malicious software with the intent to cause harm. When a software package shares behavior traits with malicious software, it may become flagged by security solutions. Any detection from security solutions can cause friction for the end-users during software deployment. While the behavior is likely intended by the developer, there is a small chance this detection is true positive, and an early indication of a software supply chain attack.

Problem

Obfuscation is a process of mangling the software code legibility. Obfuscation can be applied to both the application source and its compiled code counterpart. In both cases, obfuscation can interfere with the accuracy of security and software quality assessment solutions. For this reason, obfuscation is a technique commonly used by malicious actors as a means of bypassing security solutions and avoiding detection. While presence of obfuscation does not imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. One example of acceptable use for code obfuscation is minimizing the size of script files that are not intended to be read by humans. In such a case, the trade-off between file size and code legibility is considered acceptable.

Problem

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are structured addresses that point to locations and assets on the internet. URLs allow software developers to build complex applications that exchange data with servers that can be hosted in multiple geographical regions. URLs can commonly be found embedded in documentation, configuration files, source code and compiled binaries. URL paths provide additional information to a web service when making a request. They are an optional, but an important part of the URL, as they may define specific content or actions based on the data being passed. Some parameters they pass might be considered sensitive information. Since path components are not encrypted this might cause sensitive information to leak. This issue is raised for URL paths than might contain information that attackers can easily intercept. Examples of sensitive information fields include passwords and other similar parameters.

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