The Fourth Question in Software Supply Chain Security
Software supply chain security has matured fast. Most enterprises can now answer what is inside their software, where it came from, and how it was built far better than they could five years ago. SBOMs, code signing, and build provenance made that possible, and Executive Order 14028 pushed agencies, contractors, and enterprises to invest in all three.
In a new byline for Help Net Security, CodeHunter CEO Ken Ammon argues those three answers still leave the most important question open: what can this software do once it runs?
Composition is not behavior
An SBOM tells you the ingredients. It does not predict the meal. As Ken writes, a package can have a clean dependency tree and still attempt credential access, persistence, lateral movement, or data exfiltration. Context decides whether a behavior is routine or dangerous. File deletion is expected in a disk cleanup utility and alarming in an office macro. Credential access belongs in a password manager, not in a package dependency.
Signing and provenance run into the same limit. They verify who published the software and how it was built, which strengthens integrity, accountability, and auditability. They do not verify trustworthiness. Signed software can behave maliciously. A trusted vendor update can be compromised. An AI coding agent can generate code that works exactly as intended and still introduces consequences nobody authorized.
Most security programs still treat origin as the final trust decision. Ken’s argument is that origin is a reasonable first filter and a dangerous last word.
AI is forcing the timing question
The piece points to University of Toronto research demonstrating an AI-powered worm that adapts its attack strategy as it moves through a network, reasoning through new attack paths rather than exploiting a fixed vulnerability. When attackers can generate variants instantly, the observable surface of malicious code becomes unstable, and waiting for recognizable signatures or post-execution alerts to make trust decisions arrives too late.
The June 2026 AI executive order on cybersecurity reflects the same federal concern. The trust model built for slow-moving software does not hold when code is generated, modified, and deployed faster than human review can keep up.
From software identity to software behavior
Ken’s conclusion extends a principle security teams already know. Zero Trust rejected implicit trust in networks, devices, and identities. The same standard now needs to apply to software execution: no artifact should be trusted solely because of its origin, signature, or reputation.
That is the foundation of Zero Trust for Code. Supply chain controls remain essential, but the practical question changes from “do we recognize this?” to “is this behavior authorized?” Answering it means evaluating what an artifact is capable of doing, before execution, against enterprise policy, with evidence a security team can stand behind.
Read Ken’s full byline at Help Net Security: Why SBOMs, signing, and provenance still don’t tell you if software is safe
