Securing the development environment
Attackers are increasingly targeting developer tools and workspaces (IDEs, extensions, SDKs), regardless of whether they are running locally or cloud-based, with the intent of interfering with pre-commit phase activities. By compromising these, attackers can embed malicious code early in the software development process with the aim of impacting a broad number of downstream consumers.
But why even target activities in the pre-commit phase? Because it can sometimes allow them to bypass tighter security checks later in the process. Unfortunately, many organizations tend to trust code from their developers without further scrutiny. Attackers are looking to exploit this trust to sneak in undetected. A notable example is the Solorigate breach in 2019, where hackers discreetly added 4,000 lines of malicious code at an early stage, which allowed the code to be officially approved and digitally signed after the code was committed to the repository.
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