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TH17137

Detected presence of files containing URLs related to PyPI package publishing API.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
passhighhighNoneNone

About the issue​

Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are structured addresses that point to locations and assets on the internet. URLs can commonly be found embedded in documentation, configuration files, source code and compiled binaries. One or more embedded URLs were discovered to link to addresses related to the Python Package Index (PyPI) publishing API. PyPI is the default package registry for the Python ecosystem and hosts Python packages used across web, data science, automation, and tooling applications. Attackers often abuse access to PyPI publishing endpoints to publish malicious packages, tamper with existing releases, or remove legitimate packages under compromised maintainer identities. The presence of such network references in a software package is uncommon and may suggest worm-like behavior, where a compromised package attempts to propagate by publishing additional malicious packages to the PyPI registry.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Investigate reported detections.
  • Consult Mitre ATT&CK documentation: T1195.001 - Supply Chain Compromise: Compromise Software Dependencies and Development Tools.
  • If the software should not include these network references, investigate your build and release environment for software supply chain compromise.
  • You should delay the software release until the investigation is completed, or until the issue is risk accepted.
  • Remove all references to flagged network locations.

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).