malicious open source packages published in Q1 2026
on average between each new malicious package
of breaches now involve an outside supplier, double in one year (Verizon 2025)
average cost of a US breach, a record high (IBM 2025)
Your product runs on code your team didn't write.
In the first quarter of 2026, 21,764 malicious open source packages were published, about one new one every six minutes.
Open source packages are the ready made building blocks nearly every software product is assembled from. Attackers now hide harmful code inside those building blocks, and the pace keeps climbing.
The risk sits inside the components your product is built from, not in code anyone on your team wrote. It stays invisible until something breaks.
The Axios takeover
weekly downloads of Axios, a widely used building block in modern software.
Attackers took over the account behind it and slipped in a hidden extra component that, once installed, gave them remote control of the computer.
One checks the front door. The other checks the back.
An external scan checks your product from the outside, the way a visitor or attacker would see it. It cannot look inside to see which building blocks went into the product.
One harmful component. Three business problems.
For a software company, one harmful component can become a customer problem, a contract problem, and a revenue problem at the same time.
Your customers inherit your risk.
Breaches involving an outside supplier doubled to 30% of all breaches in a single year (Verizon 2025), and each one now spreads to more than five other companies on average.
Software companies are the main target.
Three out of four breaches that came through an outside supplier went after the software and technology supply chain.
The bill lands on you.
Supply chain incidents cost 17 times more to clean up than breaches that start inside your own company, and the average US breach now costs $10.22 million (IBM 2025).
If a harmful component lands in our product tonight, how soon would we know?
The real cost is the deal that stalls.
The most likely cost is not just the cost of the breach. It is the deal that stalls because you cannot answer a buyer's security questions.
Slower sales cycles.
Enterprise buyers now ask what is inside your product and how you watch it. Without a clear answer, deals sit in security review for weeks or months.
Lost deals.
A buyer comparing two vendors will often pick the one that can show proof, even at a higher price.
Renewals at risk.
Customers who learn about a problem from the news rather than from you start asking whether to renew.
Leadership time.
Every incident pulls executives, legal, and sales into response work instead of growing the business.
A frozen roadmap.
A breach moves every product or feature release to the backlog.
Everyone a breach would affect needs a seat at the table.
Until recently, this risk sat with one department or one technical person, and leadership heard about it only when something went wrong. That no longer works: a harmful component reaches sales, finance, legal, customer success, and the board as quickly as it reaches engineering.
Five questions to ask your team today.
You don't need to manage the technical work. You need clear answers to five questions.
Do we have a complete, current list of every component our product is built from?
Are we checking that list every day, or only when we release?
If a component turns harmful, how would we know?
Are the passwords and keys that build and publish our software tightly limited and changed often?
Could we hand a buyer proof of all this the same day they ask?
Clear answers to all five questions.
TripleKey gives software companies real time visibility into software risk and compliance.
Every component, checked every day.
TripleScan checks every component of your product daily and gives you one risk score from 0 to 100, plus the inventory and alerts your buyers ask for.
Explore TripleScan →A free check of your front door.
External Scans run a free outside check of what your product exposes to the internet, the way a visitor or attacker would see it.
Run a free external scan →
