Building Secure Code with Confidence: How Replit Uses Socket to Reduce False Positives and Manage Supply Chain Risks

About Replit#

Replit is an AI-driven software creation platform that allows developers to collaborate and debug online, manage cloud services, and access third-party generative AI models. Security is a critical component of the product, as developers use the platform to launch and deploy apps and rely on Replit to safeguard sensitive data and integrations.

Matthew Iselin, Engineering Manager at Replit, leads a lean team that supports the security of the company's JavaScript architecture.

Before integrating Socket, Replit was using Dependabot with GitHub, but it didn't offer protection for supply chain risks and was mainly reporting on known vulnerabilities (CVE's).

Fast and Easy Development Workflow Integration#

The Replit team found Socket integrated seamlessly into their existing development workflow, noting how quickly and efficiently it was implemented. It was important for the team to have security checks integrated closely with the code being reviewed, ensuring that the assessments become an automatic part of the review process.

"We definitely found it pretty quick to get up and running - integrating it as a GitHub check and having that be already in the whole flow is just really easy," Iselin said.

This ease of integration ensured that Replit's developers could continue their work with minimal disruption, facilitating rapid adoption and immediate improvements in their security practices.

Socket Gives Replit Engineers Confidence when Adding New Dependencies#

Replit engineers found they they were more confident shipping software with Socket integrated, particularly when adding new dependencies.

"Socket gives us the confidence to ship code knowing new dependencies are vetted and we have protection in place," Iselin said. "This saves us time on having to manually perform a deep package analysis."

The deciding factor for Replit in choosing Socket over competitors was the support for being able to identify things like ransomware and protestware in transitive dependencies.

"Socket goes beyond just finding vulnerable packages," Iselin said. "It can also identify a package that might have been taken over, or that might be doing something nefarious – geolocated for other countries, which we may not catch since we're primarily in the U.S. It finds packages that might be behaving differently than advertised, or that still pose a risk even if they're not technically vulnerable in the traditional sense."

In the past, Replit engineers have occasionally had to read a bunch of source code just to figure out if a package is potentially risky.

"With Socket, I think there's a lot more trust that the tools are defending us," Iselin said. "It certainly speeds up the process of adding a new dependency and we have the confidence that it's safe in our infrastructure and doesn't have any sort of 'secret agendas' code in there."

Integrating Socket to cover supply chain security reduced stress for the team and enabled them to focus on development and other critical tasks.

"It's great for a small team to not be super nervous about that component," Iselin said. "There's a lot of other things to be nervous about, but this helps us make that list of things slightly smaller. In that regard, Socket was definitely a win for us."

Socket Helped Reduce False Positives and Support Compliance Efforts#

Since partnering with Socket, Replit has increased its operational efficiency by minimizing false positives.

"Socket is pretty reliable when it does actually have a finding," Iselin said. "We're not getting as many false positives as some other systems would provide, so we don't tend to find ourselves getting blocked."

This enhanced reliability also sets the stage for more rigorous compliance endeavors, where Socket integrates with broader security management tools.

"We're in the process of working on compliance projects right now and having the ability to have Socket integrate into tools like Vanta helps," Iselin said. "So we can identify that, yes vulnerabilities were found or detected, but they've also managed and mitigated.

"We have tools in place that protect our codebase and identify potential risks, providing confidence to our customers. This supports our overall compliance efforts, even if not explicitly part of a compliance mandate."