Blocked packages

Your package manager reports 403 Forbidden and the build fails. This page tells you whether your own policy did it, which policy, and what to do next.

Is it policy, or is it authentication?

A missing, invalid, or wrong-organization token is answered 401, not 403. If you got a 401, fix the token; see Access tokens.

A 403 means Dependably refused the request. For npm, PyPI, NuGet and RPM downloads, and for Docker images refused by the licence policy, the response names the gate that refused it. Check the response header:

curl -sS -o /dev/null -D - -u user:<your token> \
  https://repo.example.com/packages/idna-3.19-py3-none-any.whl

HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
X-Dependably-Block-Reason: release_age

The header names the gate and nothing else. Your configured thresholds, and the advisory IDs behind them, stay out of the response, because an error body travels further than the request did, into CI logs, screenshots, and support tickets.

Other ecosystems, and refusals by your organization's package Allowlist or Blocklist, answer a plain 403 without the header. The Audit log records which gate it was.

What each reason means

Reason	What happened	What to do
release_age	The version is newer than your organization's cooldown window.	Wait for the hold to expire on its own, or pin an older version.
manual	An Admin or Owner blocked this version by hand.	Ask why. An Admin or Owner can lift it: open Packages, then the package, then the version's Actions menu, then Unblock.
deprecated	Upstream marked the version deprecated or yanked.	Move to a supported version.
revoked	The version has disappeared from upstream.	Move off it. The block lifts if the version reappears upstream.
malicious	An OSV MAL- advisory names this version.	Do not bypass. Treat any machine that already installed it as suspect.
malicious_live	The vulnerability tracker found this exact version still serving compromised bytes.	Do not bypass. Treat any machine that already installed it as suspect.
kev	A CVE in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog affects it.	Upgrade. This is being exploited in the wild.
kev_ransomware	A CVE that CISA marks as used in ransomware campaigns affects it.	Upgrade.
ssvc_exploitation	CISA's exploitation assessment rates an advisory on it as actively exploited, or the assessment data is out of date.	Upgrade. If the data is out of date, ask your operator to check the vulnerability tracker connection.
epss	Its exploit-likelihood score exceeds your organization's tolerance.	Upgrade, or raise the tolerance deliberately.
epss_percentile	An advisory on it ranks above your organization's EPSS percentile ceiling.	Upgrade, or raise the ceiling deliberately.
vuln_score	Its CVSS score exceeds your organization's tolerance.	Upgrade, or raise the tolerance deliberately.
provenance	Signature or attestation verification failed, found no signature, or had no trust anchor to check against.	Open Settings, then Signatures, and check the Signature trust anchors section.
install_script	The package ships install or lifecycle scripts, which your organization blocks.	Add it to the Install-script allowlist if it is known-good.
license	Its licence is not on your organization's allowed list, is on its blocked list, or is not declared.	Use a differently licensed package, or amend the policy.

Unblock overrides every gate. An unblocked version is served even if a malicious, exploited, or licence gate would refuse it, so use it only on a version you have reviewed.

The gates themselves, and who can change them, are described in Settings.

Why the version was listed at all

A package index leaves out versions that the gates Dependably can decide from stored data would refuse. Some refusals can only happen at download.

A version nobody has fetched yet. Only the gates decidable from upstream metadata apply to it in the index: release age, where the upstream publishes a timestamp, and deprecation, where it publishes a marker. The vulnerability, provenance, install-script, and licence gates need the artefact itself, so they run on the first fetch instead. A build can therefore meet one of those reasons on a version the index listed.

The licence gate, and the signature gate with no trust anchor configured, are applied at download only, even for a version already cached.

Alpine apk. The index is upstream bytes that the client itself signature-verifies, so rewriting the index would invalidate that signature. apk is gated at download only.

Finding it after the fact

Every refusal writes an entry to the Activity tab of the Audit log. Filter the event type by Blocked (all) to see every refusal with its package, actor, and source address; each gate also has its own blocked_ event, such as blocked_release_age.

An automatic block also opens a Quarantine review entry, so a refusal you disagree with has somewhere to be approved rather than needing the policy turned off. A manual block does not. Release-age holds leave that queue on their own once the version is old enough.

Making a hold less surprising

If developers hit release_age often, the cooldown is doing its job but arriving too late to be useful. Pinning your dependencies helps more than lowering it, because a build then resolves to a version that is already past the window. Watching the quarantine queue helps too: you see the hold before a build fails.