Multiple NuGet Package Manager Flaws Let Attackers Target .NET Framework

51 individual software components have been identified by the security experts to be vulnerable, and as per the analysis, the threat actors are still actively exploiting the NuGet Package manager via these vulnerable components.

However, recently the rate of cyber-attacks has increased rapidly, and the attackers are continuously targeting the software supply chain.

That’s why to minimize the risk of this type of attack, the experts affirmed that there is an urgent need to assess such third-party modules.

NuGet is a Microsoft-supported device for the .NET policies and functions, it acts as a package manager that is specifically designed to allow different developers to yield reusable code.

According to the report, the structure of NuGet controls a central closet of nearly 264,000 unique packages that have generated nearly 109 billion package downloads.

Flaws known in Public Packages

The security researchers of ReversingLabs have investigated the attack and declared that a Known vulnerability that is generally identified as NVD is referring to a software vulnerability.

However, during the investigation, the analysts detected 51 unique components which contain various software components that are vulnerable to medium and low-severity vulnerabilities.

The experts have found various versions of 7-Zip, WinSCP, and PuTTYgen, plans in their investigation that renders complex compression and network functionality.

Silent Flaws in Public Packages

A silent flaw is a type of known vulnerability, and experts detected this flaw by inspecting the dependency list. However, silent flaw generally gets introduced by linking package dependencies, later it results in covering some crucial data of the dependency list.

This flaw contains version numbers that can tell them which Zlib version is currently implying in the library, and therefore it helps the experts to determine which vulnerabilities have been impacted.

Evaluation Report of Software Quality

The cybersecurity researchers of ReversingLabs generally produce tools that assist companies to manage a better penetration into the software solutions. 

But, recently they have implemented a way for performing a detailed analysis using a very advanced static analysis on binary code.

Here, the main motive of the experts for doing this analysis, as it allows detection of a complex attack like SUNBURST because this type of attack successfully targets software and hamper the development of the software.

These types of attacks are quite complex in nature, and the security analysts have found more than 50,000 software components that have been extracted from NuGet packages.

All these packages are associated with a vulnerable version of “zlib” data compression library, and they are vulnerable to the security flaws like:-

• CVE-2016-9840
• CVE-2016-9841
• CVE-2016-9842
• CVE-2016-9843

Further, they have strictly suggested that the companies that are developing software solutions are needed to become more conscious regarding such risks. 

And not only that even they also added that every company should know how to handle this kind of attack without any severe loss.

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