English
Related papers

Related papers: The Hitchhiker's Guide to Malicious Third-Party De…

200 papers

With the rise of the library ecosystem (such as NPM for JavaScript and PyPI for Python), a developer has access to a multitude of library packages that they can adopt as dependencies into their application.Prior work has found that these…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-07-02 Supatsara Wattanakriengkrai , Christoph Treude , Raula Gaikovina Kula

Modern software systems are often built by leveraging code written by others in the form of libraries and packages to accelerate their development. While there are many benefits to using third-party packages, software projects often become…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-08-30 Jasmine Latendresse , Suhaib Mujahid , Diego Elias Costa , Emad Shihab

In Go, the widespread adoption of open-source software has led to a flourishing ecosystem of third-party dependencies, which are often integrated into critical systems. However, the reuse of dependencies introduces significant supply chain…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-09-05 Carmine Cesarano , Vivi Andersson , Roberto Natella , Martin Monperrus

One of the biggest strength of many modern programming languages is their rich open source package ecosystem. Indeed, modern language-specific package managers have made it much easier to share reusable code and depend on components written…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-04-08 Théo Zimmermann

Third-party libraries (TPLs) are frequently reused in software to reduce development cost and the time to market. However, external library dependencies may introduce vulnerabilities into host applications. The issue of library dependency…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-09-21 Wei Tang , Zhengzi Xu , Chengwei Liu , Jiahui Wu , Shouguo Yang , Yi Li , Ping Luo , Yang Liu

The management of third-party package dependencies is crucial to most technology stacks, with package managers acting as brokers to ensure that a verified package is correctly installed, configured, or removed from an application. Diversity…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-08-16 Syful Islam , Raula Gaikovina Kula , Christoph Treude , Bodin Chinthanet , Takashi Ishio , Kenichi Matsumoto

The widespread adoption of open-source ecosystems enables developers to integrate third-party packages, but also exposes them to malicious packages crafted to execute harmful behavior via public repositories such as PyPI. Existing datasets…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-12-16 Ahmed Ryan , Junaid Mansur Ifti , Md Erfan , Akond Ashfaque Ur Rahman , Md Rayhanur Rahman

Security vulnerability in third-party dependencies is a growing concern not only for developers of the affected software, but for the risks it poses to an entire software ecosystem, e.g., Heartbleed vulnerability. Recent studies show that…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2021-06-24 Bodin Chinthanet , Raula Gaikovina Kula , Shane McIntosh , Takashi Ishio , Akinori Ihara , Kenichi Matsumoto

The widespread dependency on open-source software makes it a fruitful target for malicious actors, as demonstrated by recurring attacks. The complexity of today's open-source supply chains results in a significant attack surface, giving…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-07-19 Piergiorgio Ladisa , Henrik Plate , Matias Martinez , Olivier Barais

Industrial applications heavily rely on open-source software (OSS) libraries, which provide various benefits. But, they can also present a substantial risk if a vulnerability or attack arises and the community fails to promptly address the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-04-24 Alexandros Tsakpinis , Alexander Pretschner

The NPM package repository contains over two million packages and serves tens of billions of downloads per-week. Nearly every single JavaScript application uses the NPM package manager to install packages from the NPM repository. NPM relies…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-04-04 Donald Pinckney , Federico Cassano , Arjun Guha , Jonathan Bell

Although using third-party libraries is common practice when writing software, vulnerabilities may be found even in well-known libraries. Detected vulnerabilities are often fixed quickly in the library code. The easiest way to include these…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2023-05-23 Kristiina Rahkema , Dietmar Pfahl

Modern software development frequently uses third-party packages, raising the concern of supply chain security attacks. Many attackers target popular package managers, like npm, and their users with supply chain attacks. In 2021 there was a…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-02-15 Nusrat Zahan , Thomas Zimmermann , Patrice Godefroid , Brendan Murphy , Chandra Maddila , Laurie Williams

Using open-source dependencies is essential in modern software development. However, this practice implies significant trust in third-party code, while there is little support for developers to assess this trust. As a consequence, attacks…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-09-08 Raphina Liu , Sofia Bobadilla , Benoit Baudry , Martin Monperrus

Python applications depend on third-party native libraries that may be vendored within package distributions or installed on the host system. When vulnerabilities are discovered in these native libraries, determining which Python packages…

Security vulnerabilities introduced by applications using third-party dependencies are on the increase, caused by the emergence of large ecosystems of libraries such as the NPM packages for JavaScript. Nowadays, libraries depend on each…

The large amount of third-party packages available in fast-moving software ecosystems, such as Node.js/npm, enables attackers to compromise applications by pushing malicious updates to their package dependencies. Studying the npm…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2021-03-11 Gabriel Ferreira , Limin Jia , Joshua Sunshine , Christian Kästner

Software developers reuse third-party packages that are hosted in package registries. At build time, a package manager resolves and fetches the direct and indirect dependencies of a project. Most package managers also generate a lockfile,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2026-04-03 Yogya Gamage , Deepika Tiwari , Martin Monperrus , Benoit Baudry

Security policies, such as SECURITY.md files, are now common in open-source projects. They help guide responsible vulnerability reporting and build trust among users and contributors. Despite their growing use, it is still unclear how these…

Protecting software supply chains from malicious packages is paramount in the evolving landscape of software development. Attacks on the software supply chain involve attackers injecting harmful software into commonly used packages or…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-02-13 S. Halder , M. Bewong , A. Mahboubi , Y. Jiang , R. Islam , Z. Islam , R. Ip , E. Ahmed , G. Ramachandran , A. Babar