A group of Israeli researchers explored the security of the Visual Studio Code marketplace and managed to "infect" over 100 organizations by trojanizing a copy of the popular 'Dracula Official theme to include risky code. Further research into the VSCode Marketplace found thousands of extensions with millions of installs.
  • Kuinox@lemmy.world
    6424·
    1 year ago

    Fake news headline. There is no virus installed on millions of computer.
    An extension typosquatting an extension with million of install managed to be installed a few hundred of times.

    • Tekhne@sh.itjust.works
      35·
      1 year ago

      I believe they’re referring to lower down in the article, where the researchers analyzed existing extensions on the marketplace:

      After the successful experiment, the researchers decided to dive into the threat landscape of the VSCode Marketplace, using a custom tool they developed named ‘ExtensionTotal’ to find high-risk extensions, unpack them, and scrutinize suspicious code snippets.

      Through this process, they have found the following:

      • 1,283 with known malicious code (229 million installs).
      • 8,161 communicating with hardcoded IP addresses.
      • 1,452 running unknown executables.
      • 2,304 that are using another publisher’s Github repo, indicating they are a copycat.
    • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
      202·
      1 year ago

      I wouldn’t be so quick to write it off.

      It’s a proof of concept showing the weaknesses in Microsoft’s vetting process for extensions published on the store. They then used the process to get pseudo-malicious code inside hundreds of organisations (not hundred of installs) some of which are high profile.

      • FizzyOrange@programming.dev
        3·
        1 year ago

        Microsoft doesn’t have a vetting process for publishing extensions in the store. Maybe the failure is that people assume they do?

      • Kuinox@lemmy.world
        15·
        1 year ago

        inside hundreds of organisations (not hundred of installs)

        At the time of the article, the extension listed around 300 hundred installation on the VS marketplace. There is a lot of bots downloading packages, one extension i contribute to, and nobody use it except 3 peoples, have been indicated to be downloaded 238 times.

        If you look at the number of extensions available on the vscode marketplace, and the false positive they listed as “malicious code” (read the code attentively), I’m sure my own extension will show up in their “malicious code” (it isn’t)

    • kinttach@lemm.eeEnglish
      6·
      1 year ago

      Their findings included an extension that opens an obvious reverse shell.

      • Kuinox@lemmy.world
        25·
        1 year ago

        They made themselves the extensions.
        If you are talking about the other reverse shell, it hit a local IP address.

        • kinttach@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          True, it’s a private (not local) IP. It could easily have connected to a remote system, as their proof-of-concept did.

          This code execs cmd.exe and pipes output to and from a hardcoded IP. That’s pretty weird. What’s running on that IP? How does the extension know something is there?

          It looks like VS Code has no review — human or automated — or enforced entitlement system that would have stopped this or at least had someone verify it was legit.

          • Kuinox@lemmy.world
            13·
            1 year ago

            Thing is, tons of code extensions have an RCE in one form or another, but they always hit a localhost, or configurable IP. How do there automated analysis did any difference ?
            Tons of extensions summon the cmd to summon the language devtools, their automated analysis flagged tons of package and they infer millions of infeections from that.