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TH16121

Detected presence of software components that can tamper with the system backup functions.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
passhighhighNoneNone

About the issue​

Operating systems provide utilities that allow the users to have their data automatically backed up. Backups provide resilience against incidents of material data loss through hardware corruption, or unintended file deletion. Financially motivated attackers often aim to disable backup systems and delete all instances of previously backed up data. Malicious code that typically exhibits these behavior traits is commonly referred to as ransomware. Ransomware aims to encrypt all user-generated data asking for monetary payment in return for providing the access back to its victims. While the presence of code that disables backup systems does not necessarily imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. Only select applications should consider using functions that can temporarily disable backups. One example of acceptable use for such functions is allowing the user to reduce their storage footprint in case data backups are no longer needed.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.
  • Consult Mitre ATT&CK documentation: T1490 - Inhibit System Recovery.
  • Consider rewriting the flagged code without using the marked behaviors.

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).