Understanding Supply Chain Risks

The software supply chain encompasses all external code, libraries, and tools that contribute to your application. Each dependency represents a potential security risk, not just from vulnerabilities in the code itself, but from malicious actors who might compromise popular packages. These risks multiply when considering transitive dependencies – the dependencies of your dependencies – which can create deep dependency trees with hundreds or thousands of packages.

Supply chain attacks have become increasingly sophisticated, targeting everything from popular open-source libraries to development tools and CI/CD pipelines. Attackers use techniques like typosquatting (creating packages with names similar to popular ones), dependency confusion (exploiting the way package managers resolve private versus public packages), and account takeovers to inject malicious code. Understanding these attack vectors is crucial for implementing effective defenses.