Adversaries may manipulate products or product delivery mechanisms prior to receipt by a final consumer for the purpose of data or system compromise.
Supply chain compromise can take place at any stage of the supply chain including:
- Manipulation of development tools
- Manipulation of a development environment
- Manipulation of source code repositories (public or private)
- Manipulation of source code in open-source dependencies
- Manipulation of software update/distribution mechanisms
- Compromised/infected system images (removable media infected at the factory)[1],[2]
- Replacement of legitimate software with modified versions
- Sales of modified/counterfeit products to legitimate distributors
- Shipment interdiction
While supply chain compromise can impact any component of hardware or software, adversaries looking to gain execution have often focused on malicious additions to legitimate software in software distribution or update channels.[3],[4],[5] Adversaries may limit targeting to a desired victim set or distribute malicious software to a broad set of consumers but only follow up with specific victims.[6],[3],[5] Popular open-source projects that are used as dependencies in many applications may also be targeted as a means to add malicious code to users of the dependency.[7]
In some cases, adversaries may conduct “second-order” supply chain compromises by leveraging the access gained from an initial supply chain compromise to further compromise a software component.[8] This may allow the threat actor to spread to even more victims.
References
- IBM Support. (2017, April 26). Storwize USB Initialization Tool may contain malicious code. Retrieved May 28, 2019.
- Schneider Electric. (2018, August 24). Security Notification – USB Removable Media Provided With Conext Combox and Conext Battery Monitor. Retrieved May 28, 2019.
- Avast Threat Intelligence Team. (2018, March 8). New investigations into the CCleaner incident point to a possible third stage that had keylogger capacities. Retrieved March 15, 2018.
- Windows Defender Research. (2018, March 7). Behavior monitoring combined with machine learning spoils a massive Dofoil coin mining campaign. Retrieved March 20, 2018.
- Command Five Pty Ltd. (2011, September). SK Hack by an Advanced Persistent Threat. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
- O'Gorman, G., and McDonald, G.. (2012, September 6). The Elderwood Project. Retrieved November 17, 2024.
- Trendmicro. (2018, November 29). Hacker Infects Node.js Package to Steal from Bitcoin Wallets. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
- Brian Krebs. (2023, April 20). 3CX Breach Was a Double Supply Chain Compromise. Retrieved May 22, 2025.
Dílčí úkoly
| Název | Popis |
|---|---|
| Compromise Software Dependencies and Development Tools | Adversaries may manipulate software dependencies and development tools prior to receipt by a final consumer for the purpose of data or system compromise. Applications often depend on external software to function properly. Popular open source projects that are used as dependencies in many applications, such as pip and NPM packages, may be targeted as a means to add malicious code to users of the dependency.[1],[2],[3] This may also include abandoned packages, which in some cases could be re-registered by threat actors after being removed by adversaries.[4] Adversaries may also employ "typosquatting" or name-confusion by choosing names similar to existing popular libraries or packages in order to deceive a user.[5],[6],[7] Additionally, CI/CD pipeline components, such as GitHub Actions, may be targeted in order to gain access to the building, testing, and deployment cycles of an application.[8] By adding malicious code into a GitHub action, a threat actor may be able to collect runtime credentials (e.g., via Proc Filesystem) or insert further malicious components into the build pipelines for a second-order supply chain compromise.[9] As GitHub Actions are often dependent on other GitHub Actions, threat actors may be able to infect a large number of repositories via the compromise of a single Action.[10] Adversaries may also target the configuration and instruction files consumed by integrated development environments and AI coding agents. Project files such as tasks.json may execute commands when a developer opens or builds a project, while agent skill files (SKILL.md) supply an agent with instructions and resources that it loads on demand and runs with the permissions of the agent process.[11],[12],[13],[14] To encourage downloads, adversaries may publish these files under benign-appearing or typo-squatted names, upload unmodified copies of the genuine skills first so the listings accumulate installs before the content behind them is weaponized, or may place the malicious instructions in a secondary document that the reviewed entry point references.[15],[16] Because these artifacts are natural language or configuration rather than executable code, they may pass registry screening and signature-based scanning.[16],[17] Targeting may be specific to a desired victim set or may be distributed to a broad set of consumers but only move on to additional tactics on specific victims. References
|
| Compromise Hardware Supply Chain | Adversaries may manipulate hardware components in products prior to receipt by a final consumer for the purpose of data or system compromise. By modifying hardware or firmware in the supply chain, adversaries can insert a backdoor into consumer networks that may be difficult to detect and give the adversary a high degree of control over the system. Hardware backdoors may be inserted into various devices, such as servers, workstations, network infrastructure, or peripherals. |
| Compromise Software Supply Chain | Adversaries may manipulate application software prior to receipt by a final consumer for the purpose of data or system compromise. Supply chain compromise of software can take place in a number of ways, including manipulation of the application source code, manipulation of the update/distribution mechanism for that software, or replacing compiled releases with a modified version. Targeting may be specific to a desired victim set or may be distributed to a broad set of consumers but only move on to additional tactics on specific victims.[1],[2] References |
Propojené úkoly
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