SQ20116
Detected digital signatures that only partially validate the integrity of signed content.
| priority | CI/CD status | severity | effort | RL level | RL assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | pass | high | high | None | tampering: warning Reason: partially signed components |
About the issue
Digital signatures are applied to applications, packages and documents as a cryptographically secured authenticity record. Signatures verify the origin and the integrity of the object they apply to. Some digital signing methods are designed to allow for additional data to be appended after the signature. This appended content is purposefully excluded from signature validation so that it can be changed after a signature has been made. However, presence of such data makes it impossible to determine if the file integrity has been compromised.
How to resolve the issue
- Take a closer look at these kinds of files, because malware commonly tries to go unnoticed by hiding within these validation gaps.
- Some software vendors use this approach in a non-malicious context to insert unique package information for tracking purposes after packaging. Using such non-verifiable data segments is considered an insecure practice, and you should deprecate it in your processes.
Incidence statistics
ReversingLabs periodically collects and analyzes the contents of popular software package repositories for threat research purposes.
For every repository, the chart shows the percentage of projects that triggered the software assurance policy. In other words, it shows how many projects were found to have the specific issue described on this page.
The percentages are calculated from the total amount of packages analyzed:
- RubyGems: 174K
- Nuget: 189K
- PyPi: 403K
- NPM: 2.1M
Recommended reading
- Digital certificates (External resource - Microsoft)
- Tampering with signed objects without breaking integrity seal (ReversingLabs blog)