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TH16702

Detected presence of development extensions that execute unusual system commands.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
failhighhigh1tampering: fail
Reason: dangerous develop extensions

About the issue​

Development extensions are commonly used by software developers to extend the functionality of integrated development environments, code editors, and other developer tools. Extensions are typically distributed through public marketplaces as packages that bundle the extension code with supporting resources. Development extension code implements behaviors that integrate it with the host application. This integration allows extensions to register commands, react to editor events, or provide programming language support. Extension code is loaded and executed automatically by the host application during events such as editor startup, file opening, or user interaction. These events are used by extension developers to set up the environment for nominal extension use, or to respond to activity within the host application. However, extensions are commonly abused by threat actors to execute arbitrary commands within the development environment. It was detected that the extension code could execute unusual operating system commands. Unusual commands resemble common threat actor tactics, such as destructive file deletion, elevation of privileges, or tampering with security settings. Unusual extension code often contains code obfuscation, anti-analysis features, and other detection evasion techniques.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Investigate reported detections.
  • Consult Mitre ATT&CK documentation: T1176.002 - Software Extensions: IDE Extensions.
  • If the development extension intent does not relate to the reported behavior, investigate your development environment for software supply chain compromise.
  • You should stop using the development extension until the investigation is completed, or until the issue is risk accepted.
  • Consider replacing the development extension with an alternative.

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

  • Linux: 562K
  • NPM: 5.12M
  • Nuget: 735K
  • PS Gallery: 17K
  • PyPi: 838K
  • RubyGems: 203K
  • VS Code: 113K
  • Windows: 3.7K

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).