How Low Can You Go? The Barrier to Successful Supply Chain Attacks is Dropping

Software supply chain attacks remain a major threat to enterprise software buyers and producers, and evidence suggests that the threat is growing. In fact, Gartner predicts that by 2025, 45% of organizations worldwide will have experienced attacks on their software supply chains—a threefold increase from 2021. 

What’s more, Cybersecurity Ventures expects that the global annual cost of software supply chain attacks to businesses will reach a staggering $138 billion by 2031, up from $60 billion in 2025 and $46 billion in 2023, based on 15 percent year-over-year growth. 

Behind these numbers lies a stark reality: software development teams face pressure to deliver new features and applications to the market while the security of that software is a lower priority. That dynamic, combined with the complexity of modern software supply chains, creates easy targets for a new breed of attackers who are targeting software development infrastructure to deliver maximum impact.

A New Breed of Attacker Sets Sights on the Software Supply Chain 

It wasn’t so long ago that attacks such as those on SolarWinds or 3CX were the sole purview of nation-state-backed hacking crews. Groups such as Nobelium, Lazarus, and others were united by a sophisticated skill set, ample resources, deep experience, and, of course, the damage that was left in their wake. 

But over the last few years, the ranks of supply chain attackers have grown, with perpetrators saddling up alongside these nation-state actors. I’m referring to low-skilled cybercriminals who may lack the sophisticated skill set of their more experienced cohort but are equally motivated to wreak havoc on the software supply chain and exploit enterprises.

Their efforts begin by identifying open lanes leading to IT environments where they can steal sensitive data, deploy backdoors and other malware, or cause disruptions. Open-source repositories frequently offer such an opportunity. 

These repositories are typically platforms or online locations used to store and manage the source code, documentation, and other related resources of open-source software projects. As the name would indicate, openness is key. Anyone can access these repositories to study, contribute, modify, and collaborate on projects. This openness is part of what’s driving the growing use of open-source repositories like GitHub, which have now become a standard tool for good-willed developers who are in a time crunch. 

According to its 2022 Octoverse report, more than 85 million new open-source projects were started globally on GitHub in 2022, and 20.5 million new developers joined GitHub in that same year. But the success of these repositories comes at a price, namely:  it creates opportunities for low-skilled attackers to disseminate harmful malware on these platforms via a variety of rudimentary techniques. 

This year’s Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report points out this cost to software development: “A very real risk with this approach is that you’re taking it on faith that the libraries you’re downloading are free from malware." 

While many of these rudimentary efforts are ultimately ineffective, the number of attacks on repositories is exploding. Even GitHub got “got” this year. Add it all up, and it's clear that these attacks pose a growing security risk for software producers. Earlier this year, we released our State of Software Supply Chain Security 2024 report, which examines some of the most popular open-source repositories, including npm, the Python Package Index (PyPI), and NuGet. 

Here’s what our team found:

Below are some of the techniques that these low-skilled threat actors are using to compromise software producing organizations reliant upon these repositories to conduct their business.

Typosquatting Tactics

A great example of low-level actors exploiting these repositories is typosquatting, where the goal is simple: fool developers into downloading and using malicious open-source packages. A common tactic used to deceive developers is to give the malicious package a name similar to a legitimate piece of software, hoping that a handful of developers mistakenly download the lookalike package. Often, this type of attack involves social engineering, which targets members of the cryptocurrency community.

One example our research team identified in 2023 was aabquerys, a malicious npm package with a name closely resembling a legitimate package, abquery. aabquerys downloaded second- and third-stage malware payloads to systems that had downloaded and run the npm package. While ultimately, this particular incident had little impact, it successfully demonstrated how easy it can be for low-skilled attackers to get skin in the game.

Repojacking Ruckus

Similar to typosquatting, repojacking is another low-skilled technique that plays the name game but with a slightly different approach. With repojacking, an attacker targets legitimate open-source repositories that are publicly hosted on places like GitHub. For example, upon retirement of an open source project the attacker can hijack a trusted software repository through the rename feature. Once complete, traffic to the old name is redirected to the renamed repository, which can lead users to malicious destinations where they obtain code that puts thousands of software packages at risk.

Turnkey Targets

Another tactic these attackers are using to enhance common, low-level campaigns is phishing attacks. Our research team identified an example we dubbed Operation Brainleeches. While this incident also leveraged an open-source repository, what made it unique was that criminals uploaded malicious packages to the npm repository but did so to support turnkey email phishing campaigns aimed at another target. The ultimate marks were users of Microsoft 365, as well as the more typical target of such efforts–npm repository developers.

The big takeaway from Operation Brainleeches is that, like software supply chain attacks touched on earlier, campaigns such as this are becoming easier to pull off and more difficult for security teams to manage. If that wasn’t enough, we’ve seen firsthand that this activity is continuing, which means that development teams must use extreme caution and be hyper-vigilant when working with any open-source software, exhausting all efforts to identify possible red flags.  

Identifying the Blind Spots

However, exercising caution alone will not be enough, whether the threat comes from a low-level criminal or a sophisticated nation-state cyber expert. Most importantly, neither can be spotted by traditional AppSec testing solutions. That includes software composition analysis (SCA), which is not designed to identify malware, code tampering, or unusual application behaviors. Traditional AppSec tools cannot analyze an entire software binary delivered for deployment. This lack of suitable options is why I like to say that software is the largest under-addressed attack surface in the world.

To detect all kinds of software supply chain attacks, software-producing and consuming organizations need to have access to a collection of mature malware intelligence, in addition to complex binary analysis and reproducible builds. Utilizing this technology is what allowed our team to pinpoint a plethora of low-skilled open-source threats, in addition to finding the root cause of more complicated incidents such as the supply chain compromise of VOIP solution 3CX. 

Through these technologies, the blind spots in the software supply chain are minimized, making it easier for security teams to find malware, malicious code, unauthorized changes in software behaviors, signature tampering, exposed secrets, and other supply chain threats in their products. That’s why–regardless of who was behind the threat–teams can take informed action and, in turn, gain the trust and assurance they need before shipping or deploying software.