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TH30104

Detected presence of software components that had a recent package version removal incident.

priorityCI/CD statusseverityeffortSAFE levelSAFE assessment
passmediumhighNoneNone

About the issue​

Software developers use programming and design knowledge to build reusable software components. Software components are the basic building blocks for modern applications. Software consumed by an enterprise consists of hundreds, and sometimes even thousands of open source components. Software developers publish components they have authored to public repositories. Some open source repositories allow the developers to take down software component versions that they have published. For open source projects, version unpublishing is uncommon. Versions are typically removed due to a security incident, such as malicious code tampering or accidental development secrets exposure. Software developers often prioritize taking down such packages before informing the community that they have experienced a security incident. Therefore, it is prudent to review the reasons behind software version removals as these events might be a signal of an ongoing software supply chain attack.

How to resolve the issue​

  • Review software component documentation for the reasons behind the recent version removal.
  • If the software version was removed due to a security incident, investigate the build and release environment for software supply chain compromise.
  • Revise the use of components that raise these alarms. If you can't deprecate those components, make sure that their versions are pinned.
  • Avoid using this software package until it is vetted as safe.

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: 203K
  • Nuget: 735K
  • PyPi: 838K
  • NPM: 5.12M
  • VS Code: 113K
  • PS Gallery: 17K

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).