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TH16703

Detected presence of development extensions with unusual networking functionality.

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. It is unusual for certain types of development extensions to invoke commands that download additional content from a remote server. Attackers commonly abuse development extensions to fetch malicious payloads from public code repositories, file sharing websites, or their own infrastructure. Remotely hosted content is not immutable, allowing the attackers to change the type of malware they deploy at any time.

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
Statistics are not collected for the TH16703 policy at this time, or not applicable to this type of issue.