List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
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Category
Detected presence of software components that were removed from the public package repository.
Causes risk: components prone to hijacking
1
hunting
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. Open source projects are the intellectual property of their respective authors. At any time, the authors may choose to completely remove the software component from a public repository. This often occurs when a software project reaches its end-of-life stage, or when the software authors lose interest in maintaining the project. This kind of removal frees up the software package name, its unique software identifier in the public repository, for other developers to use. However, new software project owners might have malicious intent. Threat actors are continuously monitoring popular package names in case their unique identifiers suddenly become available for hijacking. Once the software projects falls under new ownership, the new maintainers may opt to use the project popularity to spread malware to unsuspecting users.Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
4 packages
found in
Top 100
52 packages
found in
Top 1k
264 packages
found in
Top 10k
26547 packages
in community
Next steps
Inspect behaviors exhibited by the detected software components.
If the software behaviors differ from expected, investigate the build and release environment for software supply chain compromise.
Revise the use of components that raise these alarms. If you can't deprecate those components, make sure that their versions are pinned.
Avoid using this software package until it is vetted as safe.
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 the file attachments hosted on Discord. Attackers often abuse popular web services to host malicious payloads. Since file-sharing services 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 Discord file-sharing locations does not imply malicious intent, no software should be directly linking to a Discord file attachment. An increasing number of software supply chain attacks in the open source space leverages the Discord file-sharing service to deliver malicious payloads.Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
0 packages
found in
Top 100
2 packages
found in
Top 1k
13 packages
found in
Top 10k
102 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.
Remove all references to flagged network locations.
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. Paste-and-share services are websites that allow their users to easily share code snippets and simple plain text documents. Users typically do not need to be registered on the website to publish and access shared information. For this reason, paste-and-share services are commonly used by malicious actors to deliver stages of their malware payloads. Many software supply chain attacks in the open source space leverage paste-and-share services to deliver malicious payloads. Presence of paste-and-share service references does not imply malicious intent. Software developers commonly include links to such services as documentation for various issues they encounter while writing and maintaining code bases.Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
14 packages
found in
Top 100
112 packages
found in
Top 1k
701 packages
found in
Top 10k
3509 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 removing all references to flagged network locations.