The Package Analysis Project: Scalable detection of malicious open source packages

Despite open source software’s essential role in all software built today, it’s far too easy for bad actors to circulate malicious packages that attack the systems and users running that software. Unlike mobile app stores that can scan for and reject malicious contributions, package repositories have limited resources to review the thousands of daily updates and must maintain an open model where anyone can freely contribute. As a result, malicious packages like ua-parser-js, and node-ipc are regularly uploaded to popular repositories despite their best efforts, with sometimes devastating consequences for users.

Google, a member of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), is proud to support the OpenSSF’s Package Analysis project, which is a welcome step toward helping secure the open source packages we all depend on. The Package Analysis program performs dynamic analysis of all packages uploaded to popular open source repositories and catalogs the results in a BigQuery table. By detecting malicious activities and alerting consumers to suspicious behavior before they select packages, this program contributes to a more secure software supply chain and greater trust in open source software. The program also gives insight into the types of malicious packages that are most common at any given time, which can guide decisions about how to better protect the ecosystem.

To better understand how the Package Analysis program is contributing to supply chain security, we analyzed the nearly 200 malicious packages it captured over a one-month period. Here’s what we discovered: 

All signals collected are published in our BigQuery table. Using simple queries on this table, we found around 200 meaningful results from the packages uploaded to NPM and PyPI in a period of just over a mon

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