Understanding Integrity Threats

Software integrity threats manifest in various forms. Compromised build pipelines can inject malicious code during compilation. Tampered dependencies introduce vulnerabilities through the supply chain. Man-in-the-middle attacks during software updates can deliver malicious payloads instead of legitimate patches. Each represents a failure to verify that software and data remain unchanged from their intended state.

Consider auto-update mechanisms that download and execute code without verification. An attacker who compromises the update server or performs a man-in-the-middle attack can push malicious updates to thousands of systems. It's like having a delivery service where drivers can swap package contents en route without detection. Similarly, applications that deserialize data without verification trust that the data structure hasn't been crafted to exploit the deserialization process.