A necessary step in securing an application is evaluating the supply chain of each component used to create the application—no matter how many hands were involved in its development. If any links in the supply chain are obscured, it can be difficult to confidently assess the amount of risk that an application is susceptible to.

Pickle in Python is primarily used in serializing and deserializing a Python object structure. In other words, it’s the process of converting a Python object into a byte stream to store it in a file/database, maintain program state across sessions, or transport data over the network. The pickled byte stream can be used to re-create the original object hierarchy by unpickling the stream. This whole process is similar to object serialization in Java or.Net.

The telecommunications industry has undergone tremendous changes in recent years. From the days when consumers could only make and receive voice calls on a landline to the broadband internet era in which people use data and stream videos on the go, telecom networks constitute an important backbone of the national economy. Telecom networks have evolved from 3G to 4G and 5G technologies.

A craftsman requires the appropriate skills and tools to work in tandem in order to create a masterpiece. While tools are an important enabler in the process of creating the best piece of work possible, the process also requires relevant experience and expertise on the part of the craftsman. Much like craftsman’s toolbox, a pen tester’s toolbox has wide variety of pen tester tools to work with based on the business objective.

Each year, our "Open Source Security and Risk Analysis” (OSSRA) report highlights the fact that open source software (OSS) plays a critical and substantial role in modern application development, and it is therefore foundational to the software supply chain. The prevalence of OSS within commercial applications makes it difficult to track, and that makes it difficult to manage the risk that it may introduce.

Enterprise organizations face big challenges in managing software application risk at scale. With hundreds of developers working on thousands of applications across numerous business units, the complexity of ensuring security throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC) is staggering.

A week ago, on March 29th, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) warned that two versions of xz Utils, were found to have been compromised. The xz Utils code had been tampered with to include a malicious “backdoor” that would ultimately give attackers the same level of control over affected systems as authorized administrators.