Malware is malicious software that is meant to harm or destroy computers or computer systems. Malware such as viruses, worms, Trojan horses, spyware, adware, and ransomware are all very common.
Malware assaults refer to the use of malicious programmes with the aim to harm or destroy a computer, server, client, computer network, and/or infrastructure without the knowledge of the end-user.
Malware is developed, distributed, and sold for a number of objectives, the most prevalent of which is to steal personal, financial, or business data. Cyber attackers almost always focus their tactics, methods, and procedures (TTPs) on acquiring access to privileged credentials and accounts to carry out their objective, regardless of their reasons.
Organizations are increasingly recognizing the necessity of systems security. They are working to embrace security best practices to eliminate blindspots in the attack chain, which would raise the likelihood of a security event occurring. Attacking such businesses directly is less likely to generate consequences, making it more difficult for threat actors to carry out their malevolent aims.
Threat actors are continually looking for new attack routes to get around such protections. The software supply chain assault is one such vector that is growing increasingly prevalent. Organizations are indirectly threatened by these assaults because they target third-party suppliers that provide them with software or services.
Organizations tend to spend less effort confirming that the packages they consume are malware-free since such providers are often regarded as reliable publishers. In this instance, there is an implicit trust between the software providers and their customers, which is precisely what software supply chain assaults try to undermine.
This category also includes open-source repositories, including Ruby libraries. They’re especially appealing to bad actors since they’re used by millions of developers all around the world, some of whom work for companies that leverage open-source packages to speed up the creation of their own commercial softwares.
These open-source components are packaged as libraries and serve as the foundation for applications. Many third-party libraries are utilized in the final result, depending on the complexity of the programme an organization is developing.
The premise behind modern software development is that third-party components should be reusable and freely available. Package repositories are software distribution methods that organize and host such components. The repositories make it simple to consume and manage third-party components since they are tightly linked with the programming languages. As a result, adding a new project dependency is as simple as clicking a button or typing a command in the development environment.
RubyGems is a Ruby programming language package manager. According to its own data, the repository has roughly 158 thousand packages (known as gems) with almost 49 billion downloads. In general, a gem file is a Tape ARchive (TAR) with the following basic structure:
One large research firm discovered a mix of everything when looking at the split of fascinating file types and subtypes among selected gems. One feature sticks out: the amount of portable executable (PE) files. While PE files may serve a legal role in a package, they are usually worth investigating further.
Every gem that was processed had the same executable named “aaa.png.” The PNG extension is what causes concern. It’s possible that it was used to disguise the executable as an image file. Upon closer examination, it was noted that every “aaa.png” file in every gem was an executable placed on the same path: “/ext/trellislike/unflaming/waffling/”.
Mend Supply Chain Defender
While properly deployed antivirus and monitoring softwares can provide basic security, this technique fails to identify supply chain assaults. Attackers acquired control of a build system to compromise various published software in the SolarWinds supply chain assault, for example. Typical malware detection solutions cannot detect this since it has nothing to do with traditional malware. Mend Supply Chain Defender comes into play in this situation.
Mend Supply Chain Defender is a free solution that actively monitors and stops malicious packages from being installed in your product. Supply Chain Defender, in a nutshell, functions as a barrier between your product and several open-source libraries.
Supply Chain Defender may be installed in a variety of ways in your development environment. The simplest method is to use the Supply Chain Defender script to set up and configure Supply Chain Defender for your project automatically.
Supply Chain Defender Ruby Script
New open-source releases are promptly scanned, with dozens of tests being performed to determine the possibility of the package/release being harmful.
In April 2021, Mend announced the purchase of diffend.io to enhance its presence in the application security solution market and expand its software supply chain risk mitigation capabilities.
Create a Mend Supply Chain Defender account. Supply Chain Defender provides an easy-to-use user interface for managing and organizing your project. A user account is required to begin the setup. For your project, incorporate the Mend Supply Chain Defender plugin. Click setup under the ‘New project’ section.
When you choose “With our setup script (RUBY)”, it will display a command that you can copy and paste into your terminal to run the script. This script will add a Supply Chain Defender.yml configuration file to your Gemfile as well as the Mend Supply Chain Defender plugin.
Install the Supply Chain Defender Yarn plugin in your project directory, using the following code.
To define the plugin’s installation, add the following lines to your.yarnrc file.
To get Mend Supply Chain Defender up and running in your project environment, execute “yarn install”.
Mend Supply Chain Defender Checks
To run Mend Supply Chain Defender checkers, you can use any of the following commands:
Mend Supply Chain Defender makes a decision when the checks are completed.
It will display the “allow” conclusion if everything is secure and no vulnerable packages are discovered. The verdict will be “warn” if something is amiss but not significant enough to stop the execution.
Mend Supply Chain Defender will terminate the execution with a “deny” judgment if any package with a known security risk is discovered.
Organizational environments can alter verdict-related behavior.
After the tests are completed, Mend Supply Chain Defender will display a quality score in the user interface as a way of gauging the quality of your Gemfile.
Malware is always developing, and new tactics like supply chain attacks are making it more difficult for firms to operate efficiently. To avoid hindering the productivity of developers and users, protective procedures must be included. Modern end point detection systems like Mend Supply Chain Defender can assist you in preventing malware assaults without reducing productivity.