Prettier Monkey C

Problem

Operating systems allow multiple user accounts to coexist on a single computer system. Each registered user has identity information associated with their account. At the very least, user accounts consist of a user name and an optional password. In some cases, user account data may also include personally identifiable information. Extended personal information may include user's given and last name, their email and mailing address, personal photo and their telephone number. Financially motivated attackers may seek to collect personal information for purposes of selling the private data to a third-party. Malicious code that typically exhibits these behavior traits is commonly referred to as an information stealer. While the presence of code that accesses identity information does not necessarily imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. Accessing identity information is a very common behavior for software packages. One example of acceptable use for such functions is verifying that the active user has purchased a software license that allows them to run the application.

Problem

Diligent software developers audit the source code of a component before it gets included in the software project. This audit often includes reviewing key pieces of code hosted in a public source repository. Aiming to avoid detection through spot-checks, attackers often hide malicious payloads by placing the code outside the common screen width. Depending on how the code editor used for review is configured, the malicious code might never be shown to the developer during the audit. Since many programming languages allow multiple statements to be made in the same line of code, both visible and off-screen code will be executed. While presence of code outside the common screen width does not imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. When a software package has behavior traits similar to malicious software, it may become flagged by security solutions.