Fully open-source security audit for project dependencies based on known vulnerabilities and advisories.
dep-scan is a fully open-source security audit tool based on known vulnerabilities, advisories, and license limitations for project dependencies. Both local repositories and container images are supported as the input, and the tool is ideal for CI environments with built-in build-breaker logic.
--cache-os)Application vulnerabilities would be reported for all Linux distros and Windows. To download the full vulnerability database suitable for scanning OS, invoke dep-scan with --cache-os for the first time. dep-scan would also download the appropriate database based on project type automatically.
dep-scan is ideal for use during continuous integration (CI) and as a local development tool.
Use ORAS cli to download the dep-scan binary and the vulnerability database for effortless integration. Example workflow is here.
export VDB_HOME=depscan
mkdir -p $VDB_HOME
oras pull ghcr.io/appthreat/vdb:v5 -o $VDB_HOME
oras pull ghcr.io/appthreat/depscan:v4 -o $VDB_HOME
Download the executable binary for your operating system from the releases page. These binary bundle the following:
curl -LO https://github.com/appthreat/depscan-bin/releases/latest/download/depscan-linux-amd64
chmod +x depscan-linux-amd64
./depscan-linux-amd64 --help
On Windows,
curl -LO https://github.com/appthreat/depscan-bin/releases/latest/download/depscan.exe
.\depscan.exe --help
dep-scan and cdxgen could be run in server mode. Use the included docker compose file to get started.
git clone https://github.com/AppThreat/dep-scan
docker compose up
depscan --server --server-host 0.0.0.0 --server-port 7070
In server mode, use /cache endpoint to cache the vulnerability database.
# This would take over 5 minutes
curl http://0.0.0.0:7070/cache
Cache all vulnerabilities including os.
# This would take over 5 minutes
curl http://0.0.0.0:7070/cache?os=true
Use the /scan endpoint to perform scans.
curl --json '{"path": "/tmp/vulnerable-aws-koa-app", "type": "js"}' http://0.0.0.0:7070/scan
curl --json '{"url": "https://github.com/HooliCorp/vulnerable-aws-koa-app", "type": "js"}' http://0.0.0.0:7070/scan -o app.vex.json
dep-scan is integrated with scan, a free and open-source SAST tool. To enable this feature simply pass depscan to the --type argument. Refer to the scan documentation for more information.
---
--type python,depscan,credscan
This approach should work for all CI environments supported by scan.
sudo npm install -g @cyclonedx/cdxgen
pip install appthreat-depscan
This would install two commands called cdxgen and scan.
You can invoke the scan command directly with the various options.
cd <project to scan>
depscan --src $PWD --reports-dir $PWD/reports
Full list of options are below:
usage: depscan [-h] [--no-banner] [--cache] [--cache-os] [--sync] [--suggest] [--risk-audit] [--private-ns PRIVATE_NS] [-t PROJECT_TYPE] [--bom BOM] -i SRC_DIR
[--reports-dir REPORTS_DIR] [--no-error] [--deep]
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--no-banner Do not display banner
--cache Cache vulnerability information in platform specific user_data_dir
--cache-os Cache OS vulnerability information in platform specific user_data_dir
--sync Sync to receive the latest vulnerability data. Should have invoked cache first.
--risk-audit Perform package risk audit (slow operation). Npm only.
--private-ns PRIVATE_NS
Private namespace to use while performing oss risk audit. Private packages should not be available in public registries by default. Comma
separated values accepted.
-t PROJECT_TYPE, --type PROJECT_TYPE
Override project type if auto-detection is incorrect
--bom BOM Examine using the given Software Bill-of-Materials (SBoM) file in CycloneDX format. Use cdxgen command to produce one.
-i SRC_DIR, --src SRC_DIR
Source directory
--reports-dir REPORTS_DIR
Reports directory
--no-error Continue on error to prevent build from breaking
--deep Perform deep scan by passing this --deep argument to cdxgen. Useful while scanning docker images and OS packages.
--no-universal Depscan would attempt to perform a single universal scan instead of individual scans per language type.
--no-vuln-table Do not print the table with the full list of vulnerabilities. This can help reduce console output.
--threatdb-server THREATDB_SERVER
ThreatDB server url. Eg: https://api.sbom.cx
--threatdb-username THREATDB_USERNAME
ThreatDB username
--threatdb-password THREATDB_PASSWORD
ThreatDB password
--threatdb-token THREATDB_TOKEN
ThreatDB token for token based submission
Scan latest tag of the container shiftleft/scan-slim
depscan --no-error --cache --src shiftleft/scan-slim -o containertests/depscan-scan.json -t docker
Include license to the type to perform license audit.
depscan --no-error --cache --src shiftleft/scan-slim -o containertests/depscan-scan.json -t docker,license
You can also specify the image using the sha256 digest
depscan --no-error --src redmine@sha256:a5c5f8a64a0d9a436a0a6941bc3fb156be0c89996add834fe33b66ebeed2439e -o containertests/depscan-redmine.json -t docker
You can also save container images using docker or podman save command and pass the archive to depscan for scanning.
docker save -o /tmp/scanslim.tar shiftleft/scan-slim:latest
# podman save --format oci-archive -o /tmp/scanslim.tar shiftleft/scan-slim:latest
depscan --no-error --src /tmp/scanslim.tar -o reports/depscan-scan.json -t docker
Refer to the docker tests under GitHub action workflow for this repo for more examples.
ghcr.io/appthreat/dep-scan or public.ecr.aws/appthreat/dep-scan:latest container image can be used to perform the scan.
To scan with default settings
docker run --rm -v $PWD:/app ghcr.io/appthreat/dep-scan --src /app --reports-dir /app/reports
Using AWS public ECR image
docker run --rm -v $PWD:/app public.ecr.aws/appthreat/dep-scan --src /app --reports-dir /app/reports
To scan with custom environment variables based configuration
docker run --rm \
-e VDB_HOME=/db \
-e NVD_START_YEAR=2010 \
-e GITHUB_PAGE_COUNT=5 \
-e GITHUB_TOKEN=<token> \
-v /tmp:/db \
-v $PWD:/app ghcr.io/appthreat/dep-scan --src /app --reports-dir /app/reports
In the above example, /tmp is mounted as /db into the container. This directory is then specified as VDB_HOME for caching the vulnerability information. This way the database can be cached and reused to improve performance.
dep-scan uses cdxgen command internally to create Software Bill-of-Materials (SBoM) file for the project. This is then used for performing the scans.
The following projects and package-dependency format is supported by cdxgen.
| Language | Package format |
|---|---|
| node.js | package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, yarn.lock, rush.js, bower.json, .min.js |
| java | maven (pom.xml [1]), gradle (build.gradle, .kts), scala (sbt), bazel |
| php | composer.lock |
| python | setup.py, requirements.txt [2], Pipfile.lock, poetry.lock, bdist_wheel, .whl, .egg-info |
| go | binary, go.mod, go.sum, Gopkg.lock |
| ruby | Gemfile.lock, gemspec |
| rust | binary, Cargo.toml, Cargo.lock |
| .Net | .csproj, packages.config, project.assets.json [3], packages.lock.json, .nupkg |
| dart | pubspec.lock, pubspec.yaml |
| haskell | cabal.project.freeze |
| elixir | mix.lock |
| c/c++ | conan.lock, conanfile.txt |
| clojure | Clojure CLI (deps.edn), Leiningen (project.clj) |
| docker / oci image | All supported languages and Linux OS packages |
| GitHub Actions Workflows | .github/workflows/*.yml |
| Jenkins Plugins | .hpi files |
| YAML manifests | docker-compose, kubernetes, kustomization, skaffold, tekton etc |
NOTE
The docker image for dep-scan currently doesn't bundle suitable java and maven commands required for bom generation. To workaround this limitation, you can -
cdxgen command locally and subsequently passing this to dep-scan via the --bom argument.Refer to this example yaml configuration for integrating dep-scan with Azure Pipelines. The build step would perform the scan and display the report inline as shown below:
This tool can be used with GitHub Actions using this action.
This repo self-tests itself with both sast-scan and dep-scan! Check the GitHub workflow file of this repo.
- name: Self dep-scan
uses: AppThreat/dep-scan-action@master
env:
VDB_HOME: ${{ github.workspace }}/db
GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
The following environment variables can be used to customise the behaviour.
To download security advisories from GitHub, a personal access token with the following scope is necessary.
export GITHUB_TOKEN="<PAT token>"
Fix version for each vulnerability is retrieved from the sources. Sometimes, there might be known vulnerabilities in the fix version reported. Eg: in the below screenshot the fix versions suggested for jackson-databind might contain known vulnerabilities.
By passing an argument --suggest it is possible to force depscan to recheck the fix suggestions. This way the suggestion becomes more optimal for a given package group.
Notice, how the new suggested version is 2.9.10.5 which is an optimal fix version. Please note that the optimal fix version may not be the appropriate version for your application based on compatibility.
--risk-audit argument enables package risk audit. Currently, only npm and pypi packages are supported in this mode. A number of risk factors are identified and assigned weights to compute a final risk score. Packages that then exceed a maximum risk score (config.pkg_max_risk_score) are presented in a table.
Use --private-ns to specify the private package namespace that should be checked for dependency confusion type issues where a private package is available on public npm/pypi registry.
For example, to check if private packages with namespaces @appthreat and @shiftleft are not accidentally made public, use the below argument.
--private-ns appthreat,shiftleft
| Risk category | Default Weight | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| pkg_private_on_public_registry | 4 | Private package is available on a public registry |
| pkg_min_versions | 2 | Packages with less than 3 versions represent an extreme where they could be either super stable or quite recent. Special heuristics are applied to ignore older stable packages |
| mod_create_min_seconds | 1 | Less than 12 hours difference between modified and creation time. This indicates that the upload had a defect that had to be rectified immediately. Sometimes, such a rapid update could also be malicious |
| latest_now_min_seconds | 0.5 | Less than 12 hours difference between the latest version and the current time. Depending on the package such a latest version may or may not be desirable |
| latest_now_max_seconds | 0.5 | Package versions that are over 6 years old are in use. Such packages might have vulnerable dependencies that are known or yet to be found |
| pkg_min_maintainers | 2 | Package has less than 2 maintainers. Many opensource projects have only 1 or 2 maintainers so special heuristics are used to ignore older stable packages |
| pkg_min_users | 0.25 | Package has less than 2 npm users |
| pkg_install_scripts | 2 | Package runs a custom pre or post installation scripts. This is often malicious and a downside of npm. |
| pkg_node_version | 0.5 | Package supports outdated version of node such as 0.8, 0.10, 4 or 6.x. Such projects might have prototype pollution or closure related vulnerabilities |
| pkg_scope | 4 or 0.5 | Packages that are used directly in the application (required scope) gets a score with a weight of 4. Optional packages get a score of 0.25 |
| deprecated | 1 | Latest version is deprecated |
Refer to pkg_query.py::get_category_score method for the risk formula.
A parameter called created_now_quarantine_seconds is used to identify packages that are safely past the quarantine period (1 year). Certain risks such as pkg_min_versions and pkg_min_maintainers are suppressed for packages past the quarantine period. This adjustment helps reduce noise since it is unlikely that a malicious package can exist in a registry unnoticed for over a year.
All parameters can be customized by using environment variables. For eg:
export PKG_MIN_VERSIONS=4 to increase and set the minimum versions category to 4.
By passing -t os, depscan can generate an SBoM for a live operating system or a VM with OS packages and kernel information. Optionally, pass the argument --deep to generate an SBoM with both OS and application packages and to check for application vulnerabilities.
All OS packages.
depscan -t os -i . -o reports/depscan.json
All OS and application packages.
depscan -t os --deep -i . -o reports/depscan.json
dep-scan can scan the dependencies for any license limitations and report them directly on the console log. To enable license scanning set the environment variable FETCH_LICENSE to true.
export FETCH_LICENSE=true
The license data is sourced from choosealicense.com and is quite limited. If the license of a given package cannot be reliably matched against this list it will get silently ignored to reduce any noise. This behavior could change in the future once the detection logic gets improved.
dep-scan could auto-detect most cloud applications and Kubernetes manifest files. Pass the argument -t yaml-manifest to manually specify the type.
Dependency Check is considered the industry standard for open-source dependency scanning. After personally using this great product for many years, I decided to write my own from scratch, partly as a dedication to this project. By using a streaming database based on msgpack and using JSON schema, dep-scan is more performant than dependency check in CI environments. Plus, with support for GitHub advisory source and grafeas report export and submission, dep-scan is on track to become a next-generation dependency audit tool.
Several other tools piggyback on Sonatype ossindex API server. For some reason, I always felt uncomfortable letting a commercial company track the usage of various projects worldwide. dep-scan is, therefore, 100% private and guarantees never to perform any tracking!
These mature projects are considered the benchmark for container, filesystem and registry scanning. dep-scan is yet to be benchmarked against these projects for results and performance. dep-scan even uses Trivy for container SBoM generation via cdxgen-binary-plugins, although this would change in the future. I aspire to make dep-scan outperform these projects with simplicity and actionable results. The CVE insights offered by dep-scan could be used for prioritization to reduce the number of package updates and container rebuilds.
The developers could be reached via the discord channel.
FAQs
Fully open-source security audit for project dependencies based on known vulnerabilities and advisories.
We found that appthreat-depscan demonstrated a healthy version release cadence and project activity because the last version was released less than a year ago. It has 1 open source maintainer collaborating on the project.
Did you know?
Socket for GitHub automatically highlights issues in each pull request and monitors the health of all your open source dependencies. Discover the contents of your packages and block harmful activity before you install or update your dependencies.
Research
Security News
Socket’s threat research team has detected six malicious npm packages typosquatting popular libraries to insert SSH backdoors.
Security News
MITRE's 2024 CWE Top 25 highlights critical software vulnerabilities like XSS, SQL Injection, and CSRF, reflecting shifts due to a refined ranking methodology.
Security News
In this segment of the Risky Business podcast, Feross Aboukhadijeh and Patrick Gray discuss the challenges of tracking malware discovered in open source softare.