Threat Feed

The Phylum threat feed provides a curated view into malware being released across the open source ecosystems that we monitor. Packages that appear on this feed originate from our automated risk analysis platform, before being triaged and reviewed by a team of security researchers. This produces a timely, high signal feed of threats; packages now attributed to North Korean state actors appeared on this threat feed before publication of our research article.

ℹ️ The threat feed is its own subscription and is not part of either Phylum Pro or Phylum Community editions.

Quickstart

1. Obtain an API key and set it as follows:

   PHYLUM_API=p0_...

2. Use your API key to retrieve the latest packages in the threat feed:

   curl https://threats.phylum.io -H "Authorization: Bearer $PHYLUM_API"

API Response

• has_next - true if there is another page available in the feed
• has_previous - true if there is a previous page in the feed
• packages - A list containing threat information

For example:

{
  "has_next": (true|false),
  "has_previous": (true|false),
  "packages": [...]
}

Packages will contain the following top level keys:

• created - The date the package was published
• ecosystem - The ecosystem the package was published to
• hashes - The hashes for published package archives
• indicators - The indicators that identified this packages as a threat
• name - The name of the package
• version - The version of the package

Below is an example API response from the threat feed. The top-level keys are:

{
  "has_next": true,
  "has_previous": false,
  "packages": [
    {
      "created": "Mon, 31 Jul 2023 00:52:09 GMT",
      "ecosystem": "npm",
      "hashes": [
        {
          "archive": "cz-react-ui-library-8.0.0.tgz",
          "hash": "1f9e0dd70cbd5928d41be7a1fb110e679b10ac41edafdaace8084e5d1031ca2a",
          "type": "SHA256"
        }
      ],
      "indicators": {
        "npm_hooks_rule": [
          "node index.js"
        ],
        "suspicious_url_references_rule": [
          {
            "file": "package/index.js",
            "urls": [
              "an OAST server"
            ]
          }
        ],
        "trivial_package_rule": true
      },
      "name": "cz-react-ui-library",
      "version": "8.0.0"
    },
  ...
  ]
}

Additional Query Options

The threat feed API provides several parameters for interacting with the feed itself:

Parameter	Description
page	Specifies the page of the feed to retrieve.
per_page	Specifies the number of items per page. The default is 25 and the upper limit is 50.
since	Fetches items added to the feed since the given date. Must be in the form of YYYY-MM-DD, e.g. 2023-06-18.

For example, if you want to limit the items per page to 3 since July 19, 2023 you would perform a GET request to:

https://threats.phylum.io/?per_page=3&since=2023-07-19

Package Lookup Endpoint

The threat feed API provides a package lookup endpoint that details information about a specific package, including its malware status, risk scores, and a list of identified issues. This endpoint is designed to fetch information based on a combination of ecosystem, package name, and version.

Endpoint

GET https://threats.phylum.io/<ecosystem>/<name>/<version>

Parameters

• ecosystem: The package ecosystem (one of: pypi, npm, maven, rubygems, nuget, golang, or cargo).
• name: The name of the package.
• version: The version of the package.

Response Structure

The response is a JSON object containing the following keys:

• code: The HTTP status code.
• malware: A boolean indicating if the package has been triaged as malware.
• riskScores: An object containing risk scores for each of the 5 Phylum risk domains associated with the package.
• issues: An object listing all identified issues and vulnerabilities related to the package. The details included with each issue will depend on the nature of the issue.

Issues Object

Each entry in the issues object is keyed by the issue type (e.g., vulnerability identifier, rule name) and contains an object with the following details:

For vulnerabilities:

• title: The title of the vulnerability.
• overview: A brief overview of the vulnerability.
• severity: The severity level of the vulnerability.
• recommendation: Recommendations for addressing the vulnerability.

For rules, the details included will depend on the type of rule. For example, the Compiled Binaries Rule will include a list of the binary files and their paths within the package. The Cargo Build File Rule will simply contain a Boolean value of true indicating that a build script (e.g., build.rs) is present in the package.

Usage Example

Request:

curl https://threats.phylum.io/pypi/adrmdr/0.1.0 -H "Authorization: Bearer $PHYLUM_API"

Response:

{
  "code": 200,
  "issues": {
    "Detect Python Obfuscation Rule": [
      {
        "file": "adrmdr/adrmdr.py",
        "type": "Hyperion"
      }
    ],
    "Triaged Malware Rule": true
  },
  "malware": true,
  "riskScores": {
    "author": 1.0,
    "engineering": 1.0,
    "license": 1.0,
    "malicious_code": 0.01,
    "total": 0.05,
    "vulnerability": 1.0
  }
}