List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
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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 Visual Studio Code community
25 packages
found in
Top 100
151 packages
found in
Top 1k
793 packages
found in
Top 10k
3.71k 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. Each of these components can have dozens or even hundreds of its own dependencies. When building applications, software developers download and install components from public repositories. For components to work properly, all of their dependencies also need to be installed. Some package repositories, like Node Package Manager (NPM), allow components to declare dependencies that are hosted remotely. Such dependencies are automatically downloaded from a specified location during software component installation. It was detected that a software component declares remote dependencies hosted outside commonly expected locations such as well-known code hosting platforms and official package registry content delivery networks. Threat actors often host malicious dependencies on attacker-controlled infrastructure, ephemeral file sharing services, or compromised legitimate sites to evade security review and retain control over the delivered content. It is uncommon to find open source components that resolve dependencies from such locations.
Consult Mitre ATT&CK documentation: T1195.001 - Supply Chain Compromise: Compromise Software Dependencies and Development Tools.
If the software component resolves dependencies from unusual locations, investigate the build and release environment for software supply chain compromise.
Consider vendoring the software component with all of its dependencies.
Avoid using this software package until it is vetted as safe.
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
7 packages
found in
Top 100
79 packages
found in
Top 1k
735 packages
found in
Top 10k
4.58k 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
34 packages
found in
Top 100
245 packages
found in
Top 1k
1626 packages
found in
Top 10k
8.95k 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
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.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
60 packages
found in
Top 100
434 packages
found in
Top 1k
2301 packages
found in
Top 10k
13.88k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections.
If the software intent does not relate to the reported behavior, 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 rewriting the flagged code without using the marked behaviors.
Problem
Software composition analysis has identified a component with one or more known vulnerabilities. Based on the CVSS scoring, these vulnerabilities have been marked as low severity.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
52 packages
found in
Top 100
388 packages
found in
Top 1k
2065 packages
found in
Top 10k
10.51k packages
in community
Next steps
Perform impact analysis for the reported CVEs.
Update the component to the latest version.
Lower severity vulnerabilities can be resolved with less urgency, but you should still make a plan to do so.
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 their reputation by being transparent. The person behind the public-facing alias is just as important as the alias itself. Developers rarely opt to use anonymous email service accounts that hide the link between their alias and the person behind it. Software components published by anonymized developer accounts often relate to activities that are unsuited for enterprise consumption.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
28 packages
found in
Top 100
217 packages
found in
Top 1k
1339 packages
found in
Top 10k
6.41k packages
in community
Next steps
Investigate reported detections.
You should consider delaying the software release until the investigation is completed, or until the issue is risk accepted.
Consider replacing the software component with an alternative.
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
79 packages
found in
Top 100
560 packages
found in
Top 1k
2912 packages
found in
Top 10k
17.75k 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
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. Each of these components can have dozens, or even hundreds, of its own dependencies. When building applications, software developers download and install components from public repositories. For components to work properly, all of their dependencies also need to be installed. Some package repositories, like Node Package Manager (NPM), allow components to declare dependencies that are hosted remotely. Such dependencies are automatically downloaded from a specified location during software component installation. Since remotely hosted dependencies are not immutable, that enables a threat actor to change the dependency contents even after a component was published and vetted by security solutions. It is uncommon to find open source components that use remotely hosted source dependencies.
If the software component resolves dependencies from unusual locations, investigate the build and release environment for software supply chain compromise.
Consider vendoring the software component with all of its dependencies.
Avoid using this software package until it is vetted as safe.