1. Typosquatting

Ever mistyped a word on the keyboard? Attackers have lots of tricks up their sleeves and know that people accidentally misspell package names. Be sure only to use packages that have been approved by your security teams.

2. Dependency Confusion

Develop any internal packages? Your internal packages should never be replaced by public packages with the same name. If they are you no longer have control over what's happening.

3. Vulnerabilities

Using open source components in your applications? Including dependencies directly from public repositories exposes your organization to risks. When a developer or CI/CD system installs a dependency it might already be too late.

4. Malware

Security know-how varies among team members? Not applying centralized security policies can lead to unintentionally installing malware like crypto miners or password stealers. Attackers are often targeting popular packages and therefore no external package can be trusted.

5. Credential stealing

Is your and customer data important? Attackers use insecure supply chains as attack vectors. History shows that blindly installing the latest versions of packages is related to risk as they may include malicious code, leaving your environment fully compromised.

6. License Compliance

Want to be on the safe side when using open source licenses? Open source licenses are like commercial agreements and need to be assessed properly. Breaching a license can result in both financial and reputational loss.