ConfuGuard: Using Metadata to Detect Active and Stealthy Package Confusion Attacks Accurately and at Scale

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2502.20528v2
• Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2025 21:57:16 GMT
• Title: ConfuGuard: Using Metadata to Detect Active and Stealthy Package Confusion Attacks Accurately and at Scale
• Authors: Wenxin Jiang, Berk Çakar, Mikola Lysenko, James C. Davis,
• Abstract summary: ConfuGuard is a solution designed to address the challenges posed by package confusion threats.<n>We present the first empirical analysis of benign signals derived from prior package confusion data.<n>We extend support from three to six software package registries, and leverage package metadata to distinguish benign packages.
• Score: 3.259700715934023
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Package confusion attacks such as typosquatting threaten software supply chains. Attackers make packages with names that syntactically or semantically resemble legitimate ones, tricking engineers into installing malware. While prior work has developed defenses against package confusions in some software package registries, notably NPM, PyPI, and RubyGems, gaps remain: high false-positive rates; generalization to more software package ecosystems; and insights from real-world deployment. In this work, we introduce ConfuGuard, a solution designed to address the challenges posed by package confusion threats. We begin by presenting the first empirical analysis of benign signals derived from prior package confusion data, uncovering their threat patterns, engineering practices, and measurable attributes. We observed that 13.3% of real package confusion attacks are initially stealthy, so we take that into consideration and refined the definitions. Building on state-of-the-art approaches, we extend support from three to six software package registries, and leverage package metadata to distinguish benign packages. Our approach significantly reduces 64% false-positive (from 77% to 13%), with acceptable additional overhead to filter out benign packages by analyzing the package metadata. ConfuGuard is in production at our industry partner, whose analysts have already confirmed 301 packages detected by ConfuGuard as real attacks. We share lessons learned from production and provide insights to researchers.

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