List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
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Category
Problem
Software components sometimes need to interact with sensitive parts of the runtime environment, often requiring privileged access to accomplish a task. Cloud workload configuration includes high-value information such as cloud provider credentials, environment variables containing secrets, and configuration files used by cloud and container orchestration tools. That information is used by applications running in cloud and containerized environments. Attackers often abuse access to cloud workload configuration to harvest secrets from developer machines and build environments, which can later be exfiltrated to attacker-controlled infrastructure and used to gain unauthorized access to cloud resources. While the presence of code that accesses cloud workload configuration does not necessarily imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. Only select software components should consider using functions that read cloud workload configuration. One example of acceptable use for such functions is infrastructure-as-code tooling that legitimately needs to read credentials to provision or manage cloud resources on behalf of the developer.
Prevalence in PyPI community
5 packages
found in
Top 100
13 packages
found in
Top 1k
83 packages
found in
Top 10k
2.05k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.
Consider rewriting the flagged code without using the marked behaviors.
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 PyPI community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
0 packages
found in
Top 1k
0 packages
found in
Top 10k
74.14k 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
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 PyPI community
7 packages
found in
Top 100
34 packages
found in
Top 1k
839 packages
found in
Top 10k
928.02k 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
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 PyPI community
64 packages
found in
Top 100
413 packages
found in
Top 1k
3331 packages
found in
Top 10k
468.19k 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
Operating systems allow multiple user accounts to coexist on a single computer system. Each registered user has identity information associated with their account. At the very least, user accounts consist of a user name and an optional password. In some cases, user account data may also include personally identifiable information. Extended personal information may include user's given and last name, their email and mailing address, personal photo and their telephone number. Financially motivated attackers may seek to collect personal information for purposes of selling the private data to a third-party. Malicious code that typically exhibits these behavior traits is commonly referred to as an information stealer. While the presence of code that accesses identity information does not necessarily imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. Accessing identity information is a very common behavior for software packages. One example of acceptable use for such functions is verifying that the active user has purchased a software license that allows them to run the application.
Prevalence in PyPI community
17 packages
found in
Top 100
116 packages
found in
Top 1k
699 packages
found in
Top 10k
27.52k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.
Consult Mitre ATT&CK documentation: T1033 - System Owner/User Discovery.