Developers Can Now Search, Analyze, and Secure PHP Dependencies with AI-Powered Supply Chain Protection
SAN FRANCISCO, CA, UNITED STATES, February 17, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Socket today announced full support for the PHP ecosystem, adding Composer and Packagist integration to its software supply chain security platform. PHP developers can now search and explore packages, generate Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) from Composer projects, and detect supply chain risks across their PHP dependencies.
PHP remains the dominant server-side language on the web, powering roughly 75% of all websites with a known server-side language. From WordPress and Laravel to Drupal and Magento, PHP underpins a vast portion of the modern internet. Packagist, the primary repository for Composer, hosts more than 440,000 packages and over 5 million versions, with more than 169 billion package installations served since 2012. Composer downloads exceed 2 billion packages per month.
The scale and openness that make the PHP ecosystem powerful also introduce supply chain considerations.
Composer enforces important boundaries around dependency execution, but its plugin model and flexible packaging system mean that installing third-party packages inherently extends application attack surfaces. In addition, most Packagist packages are distributed as ZIP archives generated on demand from GitHub repositories, which makes stable artifact verification through checksums or signatures difficult. In large open registries, these characteristics can be abused in ways traditional vulnerability scanners are not designed to detect.
Nils Adermann, co-creator of Composer and co-founder of Private Packagist, shared this perspective on supply chain security in the PHP ecosystem:
“Supply chain attacks target the trust you place in your dependencies, not your own code. Composer and Packagist have built-in safeguards, but PHP application attack surfaces grow with every package and plugin. It would be careless to hope there won’t be more attacks on PHP packages, so I’m glad to see more focus on proactive security tooling in the PHP ecosystem.”
Socket’s platform goes beyond scanning for known CVEs. Its AI-powered analysis inspects package contents and behavior to detect zero-day threats, typosquatting, backdoors, obfuscated code, and other supply chain risks before they impact production systems.
With today’s release, PHP developers can:
• Search and explore any Composer package to view security scores and dependency insights
• Generate SBOMs from composer.lock or composer.json files
• Detect vulnerabilities matched against GitHub Security Advisories, enriched with CISA KEV, CWE classifications, and EPSS exploit probability scores
• Analyze install-time and runtime behavior, including plugin definitions and autoload entry points
• Monitor new and updated packages published to Packagist
Socket supports both lockfile-based and manifest-only workflows. When a composer.lock file is present, it is treated as the source of truth for exact dependency versions. In projects without lockfiles, Socket resolves version constraints against Packagist to provide high-level dependency visibility.
PHP support is rolling out in phases. Package search and browsing are available immediately. SBOM generation, security scanning, and full supply chain protection are currently in experimental release and will roll out broadly in the coming weeks.
PHP support expands Socket’s mission to proactively secure open source ecosystems at scale. Future enhancements include AI-generated package summaries, version diff analysis, and enhanced Composer workspace and monorepo support.
For more information, visit https://socket.dev
About Socket
Socket is the AI-native security platform that keeps malicious and vulnerable code out of your organization, whether it’s installed by developers or AI agents.
Socket protects 14,000+ organizations and 1.2M+ repositories, securing 2+ million commits every month. Socket identifies 1,000+ supply chain attacks every week.
Built by the creators of open source tools downloaded over a billion times a month, Socket is trusted by leading companies across tech, retail, healthcare, finance, government, and telecommunications.
Sarah Gooding
Socket Inc
press@socket.dev
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