List of software quality issues with the number of affected components.
category ALL
Policies
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
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
Various network communication protocols allow including plaintext authentication credentials. Information such as user names and passwords could be passed through a non-encrypted channel, and therefore intercepted by malicious actors. Credentials are considered secrets, and should be kept encrypted until they are used. This policy control matches the following URI pattern protocol://username:password@domain within any software package component.
Prevalence in Visual Studio Code community
11 packages
found in
Top 100
57 packages
found in
Top 1k
141 packages
found in
Top 10k
1.15k packages
in community
Next steps
Review the reported matches. If the warning refers to a placeholder credential value, it can be safely ignored.