List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
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Problem
Buffer overrun protection on Linux is achieved in two ways. The most common solution is to use the stack canary (also called cookie). The stack canary is a special value written onto the stack that allows the operating system to detect and terminate the program if a stack overrun occurs. In most cases, compilers will apply the stack canary conservatively in order to avoid a negative performance impact. Therefore, stack canaries are often used together with another stack overrun mitigation - fortified functions. Fortified functions are usually wrappers around standard glibc functions (such as memcpy) which perform boundary checks either at compile time or run time to determine if a memory violation has occurred. The compiler needs additional context to generate such calls (for example, array size that needs to be known at compile time). Because of this, the compiler will virtually never substitute all viable functions with their fortified counterparts in complex programs. However, when combined with the stack canary, fortified functions provide a good measure of buffer overrun protection.
Prevalence in PyPI community
16 packages
found in
Top 100
97 packages
found in
Top 1k
558 packages
found in
Top 10k
12.31k packages
in community
Next steps
Presence of unfortified string functions may indicate use of unsafe programming practices, and you should avoid it if possible.
In GCC, enable fortified functions with -fstack-protector and -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 flag, while using at least -O1 optimization level.
Problem
Buffer overrun protection on Linux is achieved in two ways. The most common solution is to use the stack canary (also called cookie). The stack canary is a special value written onto the stack that allows the operating system to detect and terminate the program if a stack overrun occurs. In most cases, compilers will apply the stack canary conservatively in order to avoid a negative performance impact. Therefore, stack canaries are often used together with another stack overrun mitigation - fortified functions. Fortified functions are usually wrappers around standard glibc functions (such as memcpy) which perform boundary checks either at compile time or run time to determine if a memory violation has occurred. The compiler needs additional context to generate such calls (for example, array size that needs to be known at compile time). Because of this, the compiler will virtually never substitute all viable functions with their fortified counterparts in complex programs. However, when combined with the stack canary, fortified functions provide a good measure of buffer overrun protection.
Prevalence in PyPI community
25 packages
found in
Top 100
142 packages
found in
Top 1k
797 packages
found in
Top 10k
24.6k packages
in community
Next steps
Presence of unfortified memory functions may indicate use of unsafe programming practices, and you should avoid it if possible.
In GCC, enable fortified functions with -fstack-protector and -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 flag, while using at least -O1 optimization level.
Problem
Buffer overrun protection on Linux is achieved in two ways. The most common solution is to use the stack canary (also called cookie). The stack canary is a special value written onto the stack that allows the operating system to detect and terminate the program if a stack overrun occurs. In most cases, compilers will apply the stack canary conservatively in order to avoid a negative performance impact. Therefore, stack canaries are often used together with another stack overrun mitigation - fortified functions. Fortified functions are usually wrappers around standard glibc functions (such as memcpy) which perform boundary checks either at compile time or run time to determine if a memory violation has occurred. The compiler needs additional context to generate such calls (for example, array size that needs to be known at compile time). Because of this, the compiler will virtually never substitute all viable functions with their fortified counterparts in complex programs. However, when combined with the stack canary, fortified functions provide a good measure of buffer overrun protection.
Prevalence in PyPI community
11 packages
found in
Top 100
76 packages
found in
Top 1k
500 packages
found in
Top 10k
17.85k packages
in community
Next steps
Presence of some input functions may indicate use of unsafe programming practices, and you should avoid it if possible.
In GCC, enable fortified functions with -fstack-protector and -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 flag, while using at least -O1 optimization level.
Problem
ASLR (address-space layout randomization) is a mitigation technique that increases the difficulty of performing buffer-overflow attacks that require the attacker to know the address of the program in memory. This is done by loading the program at a randomly selected address in the process' address space. ASLR-enabled kernels can choose a random load address only for position-independent executables and code.
Prevalence in PyPI community
3 packages
found in
Top 100
19 packages
found in
Top 1k
122 packages
found in
Top 10k
4.38k packages
in community
Next steps
To support ASLR, the program must be compiled as position-independent code. In most compilers, this is done by passing the corresponding position-independent flag, such as -fPIC for shared libraries or -fPIE for executables.
Problem
On Linux, the user may override the normal library search path by specifying RPATH or RUNPATH. This will force the dynamic linker to prioritize user-specified directories when searching for shared libraries. Binary planting is a technique that allows the attacker to execute malicious code by placing it into one of the executable's library search directories.
Prevalence in PyPI community
1 packages
found in
Top 100
3 packages
found in
Top 1k
68 packages
found in
Top 10k
1.65k packages
in community
Next steps
Avoid manually specifying the library search path.
If that is not possible, avoid setting library search path(s) to directories that are typically user-writable, such as /tmp or /home.
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
Buffer overrun protection on Linux is achieved in two ways. The most common solution is to use the stack canary (also called cookie). The stack canary is a special value written onto the stack that allows the operating system to detect and terminate the program if a stack overrun occurs. In most cases, compilers will apply the stack canary conservatively in order to avoid a negative performance impact. Therefore, stack canaries are often used together with another stack overrun mitigation - fortified functions. Fortified functions are usually wrappers around standard glibc functions (such as memcpy) which perform boundary checks either at compile time or run time to determine if a memory violation has occurred. The compiler needs additional context to generate such calls (for example, array size that needs to be known at compile time). Because of this, the compiler will virtually never substitute all viable functions with their fortified counterparts in complex programs. However, when combined with the stack canary, fortified functions provide a good measure of buffer overrun protection.
Prevalence in PyPI community
15 packages
found in
Top 100
41 packages
found in
Top 1k
241 packages
found in
Top 10k
3.25k packages
in community
Next steps
In GCC, enable fortified functions with -fstack-protector and -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 flag, while using at least -O1 optimization level.
Problem
On Linux, external symbols are resolved via the procedure linkage table (PLT) and the global offset table (GOT). Without any protection, both are writable at runtime and thus leave the executable vulnerable to pointer hijacking - an attack where the function address is overwritten with an address of a malicious function. Pointer hijacking can be mitigated by using full read-only relocations, which instruct the compiler to unify global offset tables into a single read-only table. This requires that all external function symbols are resolved at load-time instead of during execution, and may increase loading time for large programs.
Prevalence in PyPI community
26 packages
found in
Top 100
146 packages
found in
Top 1k
886 packages
found in
Top 10k
23.68k packages
in community
Next steps
In most cases, it's recommended to use full read-only relocations (in GCC: -Wl,-z,relro,-z,now).
If the executable load-time is an issue, you should use partial read-only relocations.
Problem
Debug databases are typically only used during software development. On Windows, they are usually files embedded into the executable (PDB), while on Linux, they're contained inside special executable sections. The databases contain private debug symbols that make it significantly easier to reverse-engineer a closed-source application. In some cases, having a debug database is equivalent to having access to the source code. Presence of debug databases could indicate that one or more software components have been built using a debug profile, instead of the release. Private debug databases can be embedded into software components by programming language tools.
Prevalence in PyPI community
27 packages
found in
Top 100
138 packages
found in
Top 1k
848 packages
found in
Top 10k
18.14k packages
in community
Next steps
To remediate this issue and remove private debugging information, refer to your programming language toolchain documentation.
Problem
Common compilers often embed source code information into executables for debugging purposes, usually by mapping symbols to source filenames or paths. While this is typically desirable in open-source software and standard tools, that information can be used to determine security weaknesses, code repository layout, trade secrets and similar sensitive information. Such symbols make it easier to reverse-engineer a closed source application.
Prevalence in PyPI community
27 packages
found in
Top 100
146 packages
found in
Top 1k
957 packages
found in
Top 10k
28.14k packages
in community
Next steps
Strip out such information in the linking phase by using compiler options like the -s flag in GCC, or in the post-build phase by using the strip tool.