Investing in Socket
Open source is the bedrock upon which all modern applications are built. But here’s the elephant in the room: There is a huge attack surface hidden within this seemingly solid foundation, and the proliferation of open source usage has opened a Pandora’s box of security threats.
Ask any seasoned CISO in private how they feel about the risks associated with the open source supply chain, and you’ll hear any number of serious concerns. The amount of open source code embedded within any application today represents a huge and expanding attack surface, which makes open source dependencies an increasingly enticing target for malicious actors. Security teams are grappling with how to get a handle on their dependencies—a seemingly endless task—and struggling to make progress with the state of current software composition analysis (SCA) tooling. They often have to resort to patchwork solutions, using inadequate tools, or even attempting to manually review high-risk packages.
Worse still, while some cybersecurity threats remain theoretical, supply chain attacks are all too real. For years, attackers have realized just how effective they can be, and have performed high-profile breach after high-profile breach using this tactic. The most famous example is the 2020 SolarWinds breach, which drew sharp attention to the all-too-often overlooked weaknesses in the software supply chain.
Enter Socket. Rather than merely scan for already publicly known vulnerabilities, Socket delves deeper to monitor open source packages for the most important issues, covering the spectrum of risk across the software supply chain—from high-level red flags such as malware, typo-squatting, and misleading packages, to unmaintained code, unknown maintainers, and excessive permissions.
What truly sets Socket apart, though, is its developer-centric approach. Socket founder and CEO Feross Aboukhadijeh is an amazing developer known for his prolific contributions to open source, including as the original author of the popular WebTorrent and Standard JS projects. He is exactly who you want building security-focused developer tools that developers actually use.
We’re excited to lead Socket’s Series A, and to partner with Feross and team on securing the software supply chain so developers can build with confidence.
