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TH17102

Detected presence of files containing a Base-encoded URL.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
passlowhighNoneNone

About the issue​

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are structured addresses that point to locations and assets on the internet. URLs allow software developers to build complex applications that exchange data with servers that can be hosted in multiple geographical regions. URLs can commonly be found embedded in documentation, configuration files, source code and compiled binaries. Obfuscation is a process of mangling the software code legibility, and it can be applied to URLs embedded in a software package. Obfuscation can interfere with the accuracy of security and software quality assessment solutions. For this reason, obfuscation is a technique commonly used by malicious actors as a means of bypassing security solutions and avoiding detection. While presence of URL obfuscation does not imply malicious intent, all of its uses in a software package should be documented and approved. URLs have their own encoding type called url-encoding, which is the preferred way of encoding URLs used on the web.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Investigate reported detections as indicators of software tampering.
  • Consult Mitre ATT&CK documentation: T1027 - Obfuscated Files or Information.
  • Consider encoding all embedded URL data with url-encoded format.

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).