Introducing Socket Scanning for OpenVSX Extensions

Your IDE extensions have root access to everything: your code, credentials, and production secrets. And attackers know that you install these extensions without a second thought.

Recent attacks have shown that these tools cannot be assumed safe. Teams need a way to understand what an extension is doing before it reaches their environment.

Today we are announcing experimental support for scanning the OpenVSX ecosystem. This brings Socket’s proactive security analysis to the rapidly growing universe of VS Code compatible extensions. Socket’s OpenVSX scanning gives teams early visibility into risky capabilities, malicious behaviors, and vulnerable extensions before they reach developer machines. Teams gain a direct way to evaluate extensions before installation, understand what capabilities they expose, and detect threats that would otherwise be difficult to spot.

Why the Extension Ecosystem Cannot Be Trusted by Default#

Extensions run with extraordinary privilege. They load directly into developer workflows with access to workspaces, terminals, environments, and your Git credentials. When an extension turns malicious, the impact can be significant.

OpenVSX powers millions of installations across cloud IDEs, remote development platforms, self-hosted environments, and VS Code alternatives. The openness of this ecosystem has encouraged rapid growth, but it has also created opportunities for attackers.

Recent attacks have shown that extensions in both the Open VSX Registry and the VS Code Marketplace can no longer be treated as safe by default. The GlassWorm campaign demonstrated how easily malicious extensions can slip into familiar tooling, spreading across multiple registries while delivering backdoors, credential theft, and covert remote access.

A recent academic study from North Carolina State University examined more than 25,000 VS Code extensions and confirmed that real, exploitable vulnerabilities exist in widely installed tools. The researchers found extensions that could be triggered to run arbitrary code, write to files, spawn servers, and interact with the network in unsafe ways. These issues weren’t rare edge cases. Millions of developers had installed affected extensions, and many of the risky patterns were still present across alternative registries like OpenVSX even after related extensions were removed from the primary marketplace.

A separate study by Wiz researchers uncovered more than 550 leaked secrets inside VS Code and OpenVSX extension packages, including publishing tokens with permission to release new extension versions. In practice, this meant that an attacker who found one of these tokens could push a tampered update through the legitimate release channel and instantly turn a trusted tool into a supply chain threat.

Developer tools now represent a real attack surface. Extensions run with deep access to code, workspaces, and environment details, and teams need visibility into their behavior before installation. This is the gap Socket is closing.

An Example Malicious Detection#

Here is one example of the kind of threat hiding inside the extension ecosystem. When Socket scanned the piiithon-linter extension from OpenVSX, it uncovered a backdoor that activated immediately and carried out extensive reconnaissance. The extension collected environment variables, Git user email, IP address, geolocation, hostnames, and operating system details, then exfiltrated this data to a Slack webhook.

It also retrieved a command and control listener URL from a GitHub gist and executed platform specific payloads disguised as text files. The extension checked for security tools and appeared to adjust behavior based on geography. The visible linting functionality seemed to serve mainly as a cover for the malicious code.

This is exactly the kind of hidden behavior that can sit inside everyday developer tools without drawing attention.

What Socket Scans in OpenVSX#

Socket evaluates each extension’s code, activation patterns, declared capabilities, and privileged behaviors. The analysis combines Socket’s AI malware detector with a set of code extension specific heuristics designed to surface unsafe or unusual activity.

Socket inspects:

• Proposed API usage
• Debugger contributions
• Webview contributions
• File system access patterns
• Workspace and wildcard activation events
• Extension dependencies and packs
• Support for untrusted workspaces
• Virtual workspace behavior
• Bundled native code or executables
• Network access patterns and suspicious requests
• Obfuscated or minimized code segments

When a threat is found, Socket identifies the files and capabilities involved and provides detailed guidance for teams evaluating whether an extension is safe to use.

How Scanning Works#

Socket scans OpenVSX extensions through the same PURL API used for npm packages, Chrome extensions, GitHub Actions, and other ecosystems.

Teams can request a scan by querying Socket with the OpenVSX package identifier:

pkg:vscode/<namespace>/<name>?repository_url=https://open-vsx.org

Socket retrieves the extension, analyzes it, and returns a full report with permissions, behaviors, activation flows, and detected risks. This allows organizations to adopt OpenVSX scanning without changes to existing workflows or infrastructure.

Pilot Availability#

OpenVSX scanning is launching today in an experimental state. Access is enabled for select organizations as we continue refining detection quality and expanding coverage.

As the feature progresses into beta, it is expected to be available on our Business and Enterprise tiers. Broader availability will be evaluated as the feature matures.

To join the pilot, contact sales@socket.dev or reach out to your Socket customer success manager.

Extensions Scanning Roadmap#

Support for the VS Code Marketplace is actively in development and will be announced separately once it is ready for production use. Our goal is full extension ecosystem coverage, giving teams a consistent and predictable way to secure their development tools.

OpenVSX scanning is another step toward a more resilient software supply chain. As attackers expand their focus to the tools developers rely on every day, organizations need visibility into how those tools behave. Socket is committed to providing that visibility wherever developers depend on shared extensions and ecosystem packages.

If you want your teams to adopt extensions without exposing your environment to unnecessary risk, we invite you to join the pilot and begin securing your OpenVSX workflows today.