Compromising the Developer: How Modern Dependency Culture Reshaped the Supply Chain Threat Landscape
Brief
- Executive summary
Modern software is assembled, not written. A single application routinely draws on hundreds of third-party components, pulled in on demand and updated continuously as part of normal process. That convenience has quietly become a dependable initial-access route that bypasses traditional perimeter and endpoint defenses.
Rather than breaching a hardened production perimeter, adversaries increasingly compromise the developer, the maintainer account, the build pipeline, or the package registry — and let trusted automation carry their code the rest of the way.
Compromising the Developer: How Modern Dependency Culture Reshaped the Supply Chain Threat Landscape