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TH16803

Detected presence of AI assistant extensions with unusual networking functionality.

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

About the issue​

AI assistant extensions are commonly used by software developers to extend the functionality of AI coding assistants, agentic development tools, and other AI-powered developer tools. Extensions are typically distributed through public marketplaces as packages that bundle skill instruction files with supporting resources. Skill instruction files describe specialized capabilities that the AI assistant can invoke, such as guidance for handling specific file formats, performing domain-specific tasks, or interacting with particular services. The AI assistant loads instructions from these files into its context and follows them when relevant user requests or workflow events occur. These instructions are written by extension authors to guide the AI assistant toward the intended capability, or to provide additional context for nominal extension use. It is unusual for certain types of AI assistant extensions to direct the AI assistant to download additional content from a remote server. Attackers commonly abuse AI assistant 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 - Software Extensions.
  • If the AI assistant extension intent does not relate to the reported behavior, investigate your development environment for software supply chain compromise.
  • You should stop using the AI assistant extension until the investigation is completed, or until the issue is risk accepted.
  • Consider replacing the AI assistant 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 TH16803 policy at this time, or not applicable to this type of issue.