List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
category ALL
Policies
Info
Category
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. Copyleft licenses in particular impose substantial restrictions on the licensee. They typically require that any derived works, and even software code that merely interacts with copyleft code, be licensed under the same license. Since copyleft licenses are commonly applied to open source code, their inclusion requires that the entire software package becomes open sourced. For commercial applications, this is typically undesirable. Therefore, the inclusion of copyleft code is commonly avoided or even prohibited by the organization policy.
Prevalence in PyPI community
4 packages
found in
Top 100
42 packages
found in
Top 1k
659 packages
found in
Top 10k
89.98k packages
in community
Next steps
Confirm that the software package includes a copyleft component.
Investigate if the software publisher provides this component under a non-copyleft license.
Consider replacing the software component with an alternative that offers a license compatible with commercial use.
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 software distribution of the code they apply to. These restrictions may extend to the services built upon the code licensed under such restrictive licenses. Some restrictive licenses explicitly state that the licensee may not provide the software to third parties as a hosted or managed service, where the service provides users with access to any substantial set of the features or functionality of the licensed software. When building commercial applications, this is typically undesirable. Therefore, the inclusion of any code that may impose limits on software distribution is commonly avoided or even prohibited by the organization policy.
Prevalence in PyPI community
7 packages
found in
Top 100
82 packages
found in
Top 1k
1208 packages
found in
Top 10k
109.57k packages
in community
Next steps
Confirm that the software package references a component or a dependency with a restrictive license.
Consider replacing the software component with an alternative that offers a license compatible with organization policy.
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. Top-level domains (TLD) are a part of the Domain Name System (DNS), and are used to lookup an Internet Protocol (IP) address of a requested website. There are a few different types of top-level domains. Generic, sponsored and country-code TLDs are generally accessible to the public. Registrars that govern the assignment of domain names within the TLD may choose to sell specific domain names to an interested party. However, some registrars are known to have less strict rules for assigning domain names. Attackers often abuse gaps in governance and actively seek to register their malicious domains in such TLDs. This issue is raised for all domains registered within TLDs that harbor an excessive number of malicious sites. While the presence of suspicious TLDs does not imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved.
Prevalence in PyPI community
12 packages
found in
Top 100
90 packages
found in
Top 1k
503 packages
found in
Top 10k
15.92k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections.
If the software should not include these network references, investigate your build and release environment for software supply chain compromise.
You should delay the software release until the investigation is completed, or until the issue is risk accepted.
Consider changing the top-level domain to avoid being flagged by security solutions.
Problem
Unicode is a text encoding standard designed to support the use of text written in all of the major languages and writing systems. While most languages are written from left to right, some are written in alternative directions. To accommodate encoding text written in such languages, the Unicode standard includes a number of special characters that allow the text direction to be specified. However, changing text direction can have adverse effects on how the encoded text is displayed and interpreted. For this reason, bidirectional Unicode control characters are commonly abused by malicious actors as a means of bypassing security solutions and avoiding detection. While presence of special Unicode characters does not imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. One example of acceptable use for these special characters is in script files that parse, validate, and transform Unicode-encoded text.
Prevalence in PyPI community
6 packages
found in
Top 100
43 packages
found in
Top 1k
287 packages
found in
Top 10k
8.02k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.