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SQ14160

Detected Windows executable files that embed PDB files whose integrity is verified with an insecure hashing algorithm.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
passlowlowNonehardening: warning
Reason: outdated toolchains detected

About the issue​

Program database (PDB) files are typically only used during software development. They contain private debug symbols that make it significantly easier to reverse engineer a closed-source application. In some cases, having a program database file is equivalent to having access to the source code. Presence of program databases could indicate that one or more software components have been built using a debug profile, instead of the release.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Private debug database files should not be embedded within executables, and you should remove them from the software package before releasing it.
  • The integrity verification of the embedded database files should not be done with insecure hashing algorithms. SHA1 and MD5 hashes should be deprecated throughout the application, and a more secure SHA256 algorithm should be used instead.

Incidence statistics​

ReversingLabs periodically collects and analyzes the contents of popular software package repositories for threat research purposes. Analysis results are used to calculate incidence statistics for issues (policy violations) that Spectra Assure can detect in software packages.

This section is updated when new data becomes available.

Total amount of packages analyzed

  • RubyGems: 183K
  • Nuget: 644K
  • PyPi: 628K
  • NPM: 3.72M

Total detections per repository

For every repository, the chart shows the number of packages that triggered the software assurance policy. In other words, it shows how many packages in each package repository were found to have the specific issue described on this page. This information helps you understand how common the issue is across different software communities.

If a repository is absent from the chart, that means none of the packages in that repository triggered this policy during analysis, or the policy was not used during analysis.

Distribution of total detections by project popularity

For every repository, the chart shows how many of the total detections belong to the Top 100 (1-100), Top 1000 (101-1000) and Top 10 000 (1001-10 000) most downloaded projects. This information helps you understand the impact of the issue within each community, making it clearer when the issue affects the most popular projects.

If the chart shows zero values for all of the top project groups, that means all detections were in unranked projects (lower than 10 000 on the list of most downloaded projects).