Software Supply Chain Security: Typosquatting Malicious Packages and SBOMs

Software supply chain security focuses on protecting the integrity of every component that flows into your application—from direct dependencies and transitive packages to build tools and CI/CD pipelines. A supply chain attack compromises code not by attacking your application directly, but by poisoning a component your application trusts.

Modern applications depend on hundreds or thousands of open-source packages. A typical Node.js project has 300-1,200 transitive dependencies, each one a potential entry point for an attacker. When any package in that tree is compromised, every application that depends on it becomes a victim.

Supply chain attacks are classified under OWASP A08:2021 – Software and Data Integrity Failures, reflecting the industry's recognition that dependency integrity is as critical as application-level security. Regulatory frameworks including the EU Cyber Resilience Act and US Executive Order 14028 now mandate Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) and dependency provenance tracking.

Typosquatting

Attackers publish packages with names nearly identical to popular libraries. A developer who types npm install expresss (three s's) or pip install reqeusts installs the attacker's package instead. These typosquat packages often contain credential-stealing postinstall scripts that run automatically during installation.

Dependency Confusion

When organizations use private package registries alongside public ones, an attacker publishes a package on the public registry with the same name as an internal package but a higher version number. Package managers may prefer the public (malicious) version over the private one.

Account Takeover and Maintainer Compromise

Attackers gain control of a legitimate maintainer's account through credential stuffing or social engineering, then push a malicious update to a trusted package. Because the package name and publisher appear legitimate, downstream consumers auto-update without suspicion.

Build Pipeline Poisoning

Compromising CI/CD configurations, build scripts, or GitHub Actions can inject malicious code during the build process. The source code appears clean, but the built artifact contains the payload.

• event-stream (2018): An attacker gained maintainership of a package with 2 million weekly downloads and injected a targeted cryptocurrency-stealing payload through a new dependency, flatmap-stream. The attack went undetected for two months.
• ua-parser-js (2021): The maintainer's npm account was compromised, pushing versions containing a cryptominer and credential stealer to a package with 8 million weekly downloads.
• SolarWinds (2020): Attackers injected a backdoor into the Orion build pipeline, distributing malicious updates to 18,000 organizations including US government agencies. This is the defining supply chain attack of the decade.
• colors and faker (2022): The maintainer deliberately sabotaged their own packages, adding infinite loops that broke thousands of dependent projects. This highlighted the risk of single-maintainer dependencies.

CodeSlick provides multi-layered supply chain protection across npm, pip, Maven, and Go modules:

• Malicious package detection: Flags 66 known malicious packages and integrates with OSV.dev for real-time threat intelligence
• Typosquatting detection: Identifies packages with names suspiciously similar to popular libraries before they can execute
• SBOM generation: Produces SPDX 2.3 and CycloneDX 1.4 documents for compliance and audit requirements
• Dependency scanning: Analyzes dependency manifests across four package ecosystems in a single scan

All findings include severity ratings and are available on every pull request, pre-commit hook, or on-demand web scan.