List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
category ALL
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Info
Category
Problem
Software components are typically distributed in standardized packaging formats. Software packages are built from instructions written within package manifests that act as blueprints for package assembly. A package manifest declares the most important software properties, such as the package name, its authors and license, external dependencies, and various actions that may occur during the package lifecycle. Package managers are specialized tools used by developers to manage software components. Package managers read these manifests to deploy software components along with their dependencies. The premise of the package management system is that software components are isolated from each other, and that they rely on the package manager to provide their dependencies. However, it was detected that a software component includes code capable of accessing or modifying directories that are maintained exclusively by package managers. This is unusual as it resembles tactics used by threat actors that tamper with installed software components and inject malicious code into trusted execution paths.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
79 packages
found in
Top 100
540 packages
found in
Top 1k
3333 packages
found in
Top 10k
24.83k 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 components sometimes need to interact with sensitive parts of the runtime environment, often requiring privileged access to accomplish a task. Build pipeline configuration includes high-value information such as CI/CD platform secrets and tokens, pipeline definition files and runner configuration, build-time environment variables containing signing keys or deploy credentials, and artifact registry and package publishing credentials. That information is used by continuous integration and delivery systems. Attackers often abuse access to build pipeline configuration to harvest secrets from build environments, which can later be exfiltrated to attacker-controlled infrastructure and used to tamper with software releases or publish malicious artifacts under trusted identities. While the presence of code that accesses build pipeline 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 build pipeline configuration. One example of acceptable use for such functions is release tooling that reads publishing credentials to push artifacts.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
22 packages
found in
Top 100
95 packages
found in
Top 1k
593 packages
found in
Top 10k
3.74k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.
Consider rewriting the flagged code without using the marked behaviors.
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. One or more embedded URLs were discovered to link to raw files hosted on GitHub. Attackers often abuse popular web services to host malicious payloads. Since code-sharing service URLs are typically allowed by security solutions, using them for payload delivery increases the odds that the malicious code will reach the user. While the presence of code-sharing service locations does not imply malicious intent, all of their uses in a software package should be documented and approved. An increasing number of software supply chain attacks in the open source space leverage the GitHub service to deliver malicious payloads.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
84 packages
found in
Top 100
631 packages
found in
Top 1k
4538 packages
found in
Top 10k
42.23k 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 an alternative delivery mechanism for software packages.
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 Visual Studio Code community
9 packages
found in
Top 100
88 packages
found in
Top 1k
819 packages
found in
Top 10k
6.17k 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 Visual Studio Code community
31 packages
found in
Top 100
211 packages
found in
Top 1k
1245 packages
found in
Top 10k
8.35k 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. A port number is associated with a network address of a host, such as an IP address, and the type of network protocol used for communication. Within URLs, the ports are optional. Ports can be specified in a URL immediately following the domain name. Each network protocol, or schema, has a set of standard ports on which the service operates. This issue is raised when a mismatch between a network protocol and its expected port number is detected. While the presence of non-standard ports does not imply malicious intent, all of their uses in a software package should be documented and approved.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
72 packages
found in
Top 100
515 packages
found in
Top 1k
2732 packages
found in
Top 10k
21.26k 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 port to one that is standard for the networking protocol.
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 Visual Studio Code community
70 packages
found in
Top 100
502 packages
found in
Top 1k
2856 packages
found in
Top 10k
18.94k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.