• Overview
• Requirements
• Supported languages and package managers
• Contribute your scanner
• Configuration
  • Customizing the dependency scanning settings
  • Overriding dependency scanning jobs
  • Available CI/CD variables
    • Configuring dependency scanning
    • Configuring specific analyzers used by dependency scanning
  • Using a custom SSL CA certificate authority
  • Using private Maven repositories
• Interacting with the vulnerabilities
• Solutions for vulnerabilities
• Security Dashboard
• Vulnerabilities database update
• Dependency List
• Reports JSON format
• Versioning and release process
• Contributing to the vulnerability database
• Running dependency scanning in an offline environment
  • Requirements for offline dependency scanning
  • Make GitLab dependency scanning analyzer images available inside your Docker registry
    • Support for Custom Certificate Authorities
  • Set dependency scanning CI/CD job variables to use local dependency scanning analyzers
  • Specific settings for languages and package managers
    • JavaScript (npm and yarn) projects
    • Ruby (gem) projects
    • Python (setup tools)
• Hosting a copy of the gemnasium_db advisory database
  • Host a copy of the advisory database
  • Use a local clone
• Warnings
  • Python projects
• Limitations
  • Referencing local dependencies using a path in JavaScript projects
• Troubleshooting
  • Working around missing support for certain languages or package managers
  • Error response from daemon: error processing tar file: docker-tar: relocation error
  • Getting warning message gl-dependency-scanning-report.json: no matching files
  • Limitation when using rules:exists
  • Issues building projects with npm or yarn packages relying on Python 2
  • Error: dependency_scanning is used for configuration only, and its script should not be executed

Dependency Scanning

The Dependency Scanning feature can automatically find security vulnerabilities in your dependencies while you’re developing and testing your applications. For example, dependency scanning lets you know if your application uses an external (open source) library that is known to be vulnerable. You can then take action to protect your application.

Overview

If you’re using GitLab CI/CD, you can use dependency scanning to analyze your dependencies for known vulnerabilities. GitLab scans all dependencies, including transitive dependencies (also known as nested dependencies). You can take advantage of dependency scanning by either:

• Including the dependency scanning template in your existing .gitlab-ci.yml file.
• Implicitly using the auto dependency scanning provided by Auto DevOps.

GitLab checks the dependency scanning report, compares the found vulnerabilities between the source and target branches, and shows the information on the merge request.

The results are sorted by the severity of the vulnerability:

1. Critical
2. High
3. Medium
4. Low
5. Unknown
6. Everything else

Requirements

To run dependency scanning jobs, by default, you need GitLab Runner with the docker or kubernetes executor. If you’re using the shared runners on GitLab.com, this is enabled by default.

Supported languages and package managers

GitLab relies on rules to start relevant analyzers depending on the languages detected in the repository. The current detection logic limits the maximum search depth to two levels. For example, the gemnasium-dependency_scanning job is enabled if a repository contains either a Gemfile or api/Gemfile file, but not if the only supported dependency file is api/client/Gemfile.

The following languages and dependency managers are supported:

1. Pipenv projects are scanned when a Pipfile is present.
2. Support for sbt 1.3 and above was added in GitLab 13.9.

Plans are underway for supporting the following languages, dependency managers, and dependency files. For details, see the issue link for each. For workarounds, see the Troubleshooting section

Contribute your scanner

The Security Scanner Integration documentation explains how to integrate other security scanners into GitLab.

Configuration

To enable dependency scanning for GitLab 11.9 and later, you must include the Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml template that is provided as a part of your GitLab installation. For GitLab versions earlier than 11.9, you can copy and use the job as defined that template.

Add the following to your .gitlab-ci.yml file:

include:
  - template: Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml

The included template creates dependency scanning jobs in your CI/CD pipeline and scans your project’s source code for possible vulnerabilities. The results are saved as a dependency scanning report artifact that you can later download and analyze. Due to implementation limitations, we always take the latest dependency scanning artifact available.

Customizing the dependency scanning settings

The dependency scanning settings can be changed through CI/CD variables by using the variables parameter in .gitlab-ci.yml. For example:

include:
  - template: Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml

variables:
  SECURE_LOG_LEVEL: error

Because template is evaluated before the pipeline configuration, the last mention of the variable takes precedence.

Overriding dependency scanning jobs

To override a job definition (for example, to change properties like variables or dependencies), declare a new job with the same name as the one to override. Place this new job after the template inclusion and specify any additional keys under it. For example, this disables DS_REMEDIATE for the gemnasium analyzer:

include:
  - template: Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml

gemnasium-dependency_scanning:
  variables:
    DS_REMEDIATE: "false"

To override the dependencies: [] attribute, add an override job as above, targeting this attribute:

include:
  - template: Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml

gemnasium-dependency_scanning:
  dependencies: ["build"]

Available CI/CD variables

Dependency scanning can be configured using environment variables.

Configuring dependency scanning

The following variables allow configuration of global dependency scanning settings.

Configuring specific analyzers used by dependency scanning

The following variables are used for configuring specific analyzers (used for a specific language/framework).

Using a custom SSL CA certificate authority

You can use the ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE CI/CD variable to configure a custom SSL CA certificate authority. The ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE value should contain the text representation of the X.509 PEM public-key certificate. For example, to configure this value in the .gitlab-ci.yml file, use the following:

variables:
  ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE: |
      -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
      MIIGqTCCBJGgAwIBAgIQI7AVxxVwg2kch4d56XNdDjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFADCB
      ...
      jWgmPqF3vUbZE0EyScetPJquRFRKIesyJuBFMAs=
      -----END CERTIFICATE-----

The ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE value can also be configured as a custom variable in the UI, either as a file, which requires the path to the certificate, or as a variable, which requires the text representation of the certificate.

Using private Maven repositories

If your private Maven repository requires login credentials, you can use the MAVEN_CLI_OPTS CI/CD variable.

Read more on how to use private Maven repositories.

Interacting with the vulnerabilities

Once a vulnerability is found, you can interact with it. Read more on how to address the vulnerabilities.

Solutions for vulnerabilities

Some vulnerabilities can be fixed by applying the solution that GitLab automatically generates. Read more about the solutions for vulnerabilities.

Security Dashboard

The Security Dashboard is a good place to get an overview of all the security vulnerabilities in your groups, projects and pipelines. Read more about the Security Dashboard.

Vulnerabilities database update

For more information about the vulnerabilities database update, see the maintenance table.

Dependency List

An additional benefit of dependency scanning is the ability to view your project’s dependencies and their known vulnerabilities. Read more about the Dependency List.

Reports JSON format

The dependency scanning tool emits a JSON report file. For more information, see the schema for this report.

Here’s an example dependency scanning report:

{
  "version": "2.0",
  "vulnerabilities": [
    {
      "id": "51e83874-0ff6-4677-a4c5-249060554eae",
      "category": "dependency_scanning",
      "name": "Regular Expression Denial of Service",
      "message": "Regular Expression Denial of Service in debug",
      "description": "The debug module is vulnerable to regular expression denial of service when untrusted user input is passed into the `o` formatter. It takes around 50k characters to block for 2 seconds making this a low severity issue.",
      "severity": "Unknown",
      "solution": "Upgrade to latest versions.",
      "scanner": {
        "id": "gemnasium",
        "name": "Gemnasium"
      },
      "location": {
        "file": "yarn.lock",
        "dependency": {
          "package": {
            "name": "debug"
          },
          "version": "1.0.5"
        }
      },
      "identifiers": [
        {
          "type": "gemnasium",
          "name": "Gemnasium-37283ed4-0380-40d7-ada7-2d994afcc62a",
          "value": "37283ed4-0380-40d7-ada7-2d994afcc62a",
          "url": "https://deps.sec.gitlab.com/packages/npm/debug/versions/1.0.5/advisories"
        }
      ],
      "links": [
        {
          "url": "https://nodesecurity.io/advisories/534"
        },
        {
          "url": "https://github.com/visionmedia/debug/issues/501"
        },
        {
          "url": "https://github.com/visionmedia/debug/pull/504"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "id": "5d681b13-e8fa-4668-957e-8d88f932ddc7",
      "category": "dependency_scanning",
      "name": "Authentication bypass via incorrect DOM traversal and canonicalization",
      "message": "Authentication bypass via incorrect DOM traversal and canonicalization in saml2-js",
      "description": "Some XML DOM traversal and canonicalization APIs may be inconsistent in handling of comments within XML nodes. Incorrect use of these APIs by some SAML libraries results in incorrect parsing of the inner text of XML nodes such that any inner text after the comment is lost prior to cryptographically signing the SAML message. Text after the comment, therefore, has no impact on the signature on the SAML message.\r\n\r\nA remote attacker can modify SAML content for a SAML service provider without invalidating the cryptographic signature, which may allow attackers to bypass primary authentication for the affected SAML service provider.",
      "severity": "Unknown",
      "solution": "Upgrade to fixed version.\r\n",
      "scanner": {
        "id": "gemnasium",
        "name": "Gemnasium"
      },
      "location": {
        "file": "yarn.lock",
        "dependency": {
          "package": {
            "name": "saml2-js"
          },
          "version": "1.5.0"
        }
      },
      "identifiers": [
        {
          "type": "gemnasium",
          "name": "Gemnasium-9952e574-7b5b-46fa-a270-aeb694198a98",
          "value": "9952e574-7b5b-46fa-a270-aeb694198a98",
          "url": "https://deps.sec.gitlab.com/packages/npm/saml2-js/versions/1.5.0/advisories"
        },
        {
          "type": "cve",
          "name": "CVE-2017-11429",
          "value": "CVE-2017-11429",
          "url": "https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2017-11429"
        }
      ],
      "links": [
        {
          "url": "https://github.com/Clever/saml2/commit/3546cb61fd541f219abda364c5b919633609ef3d#diff-af730f9f738de1c9ad87596df3f6de84R279"
        },
        {
          "url": "https://github.com/Clever/saml2/issues/127"
        },
        {
          "url": "https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/475445"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "remediations": [
    {
      "fixes": [
        {
          "id": "5d681b13-e8fa-4668-957e-8d88f932ddc7",
        }
      ],
      "summary": "Upgrade saml2-js",
      "diff": "ZGlmZiAtLWdpdCBhL...OR0d1ZUc2THh3UT09Cg==" // some content is omitted for brevity
    }
  ]
}

Versioning and release process

Please check the Release Process documentation.

Contributing to the vulnerability database

You can search the gemnasium-db project to find a vulnerability in the Gemnasium database. You can also submit new vulnerabilities.

Running dependency scanning in an offline environment

For self-managed GitLab instances in an environment with limited, restricted, or intermittent access to external resources through the internet, some adjustments are required for dependency scanning jobs to run successfully. For more information, see Offline environments.

Requirements for offline dependency scanning

Here are the requirements for using dependency scanning in an offline environment:

• GitLab Runner with the docker or kubernetes executor.
• Docker Container Registry with locally available copies of dependency scanning analyzer images.

• If you have a limited access environment you need to allow access, such as using a proxy, to the advisory database: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/gemnasium-db.git. If you are unable to permit access to https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/gemnasium-db.git you must host an offline copy of this git repository and set the GEMNASIUM_DB_REMOTE_URL CI/CD variable to the URL of this repository. For more information on configuration variables, see Dependency Scanning.

  This advisory database is constantly being updated, so you must periodically sync your local copy with GitLab.

• Only if scanning Ruby projects: Host an offline Git copy of the advisory database.
• Only if scanning npm/yarn projects: Host an offline copy of the retire.js node and js advisory databases.

Note that GitLab Runner has a default pull policy of always, meaning the runner tries to pull Docker images from the GitLab container registry even if a local copy is available. The GitLab Runner pull_policy can be set to if-not-present in an offline environment if you prefer using only locally available Docker images. However, we recommend keeping the pull policy setting to always if not in an offline environment, as this enables the use of updated scanners in your CI/CD pipelines.

Make GitLab dependency scanning analyzer images available inside your Docker registry

For dependency scanning with all supported languages and frameworks, import the following default dependency scanning analyzer images from registry.gitlab.com into your local Docker container registry:

registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/analyzers/gemnasium:2
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/analyzers/gemnasium-maven:2
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/analyzers/gemnasium-python:2
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/analyzers/retire.js:2
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/analyzers/bundler-audit:2

The process for importing Docker images into a local offline Docker registry depends on your network security policy. Please consult your IT staff to find an accepted and approved process by which external resources can be imported or temporarily accessed. These scanners are periodically updated with new definitions, and you may be able to make occasional updates on your own.

For details on saving and transporting Docker images as a file, see Docker’s documentation on docker save, docker load, docker export, and docker import.

Support for Custom Certificate Authorities

Support for custom certificate authorities was introduced in the following versions.

Set dependency scanning CI/CD job variables to use local dependency scanning analyzers

Add the following configuration to your .gitlab-ci.yml file. You must change the value of SECURE_ANALYZERS_PREFIX to refer to your local Docker container registry. You must also change the value of GEMNASIUM_DB_REMOTE_URL to the location of your offline Git copy of the gemnasium-db advisory database:

include:
  - template: Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml

variables:
  SECURE_ANALYZERS_PREFIX: "docker-registry.example.com/analyzers"
  GEMNASIUM_DB_REMOTE_URL: "gitlab.example.com/gemnasium-db.git"

See explanations of the variables above in the configuration section.

Specific settings for languages and package managers

See the following sections for configuring specific languages and package managers.

JavaScript (npm and yarn) projects

Add the following to the variables section of .gitlab-ci.yml:

RETIREJS_JS_ADVISORY_DB: "example.com/jsrepository.json"
RETIREJS_NODE_ADVISORY_DB: "example.com/npmrepository.json"

Ruby (gem) projects

Add the following to the variables section of .gitlab-ci.yml:

BUNDLER_AUDIT_ADVISORY_DB_REF_NAME: "master"
BUNDLER_AUDIT_ADVISORY_DB_URL: "gitlab.example.com/ruby-advisory-db.git"

Python (setup tools)

When using self-signed certificates for your private PyPi repository, no extra job configuration (aside from the template .gitlab-ci.yml above) is needed. However, you must update your setup.py to ensure that it can reach your private repository. Here is an example configuration:

1. Update setup.py to create a dependency_links attribute pointing at your private repository for each dependency in the install_requires list:

   install_requires=['pyparsing>=2.0.3'],
   dependency_links=['https://pypi.example.com/simple/pyparsing'],
   

2. Fetch the certificate from your repository URL and add it to the project:

   echo -n | openssl s_client -connect pypi.example.com:443 | sed -ne '/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p' > internal.crt
   

3. Point setup.py at the newly downloaded certificate:

   import setuptools.ssl_support
   setuptools.ssl_support.cert_paths = ['internal.crt']
   

Hosting a copy of the gemnasium_db advisory database

The gemnasium_db Git repository is used by gemnasium, gemnasium-maven, and gemnasium-python as the source of vulnerability data. This repository updates at scan time to fetch the latest advisories. However, due to a restricted networking environment, running this update is sometimes not possible. In this case, a user can do one of the following:

• Host a copy of the advisory database
• Use a local clone

Host a copy of the advisory database

If gemnasium-db is not reachable from within the environment, the user can host their own Git copy. Then the analyzer can be instructed to update the database from the user’s copy by using GEMNASIUM_DB_REMOTE_URL:

variables:
  GEMNASIUM_DB_REMOTE_URL: https://users-own-copy.example.com/gemnasium-db/.git

...

Use a local clone

If a hosted copy is not possible, then the user can clone gemnasium-db or create an archive before the scan and point the analyzer to the directory (using: GEMNASIUM_DB_LOCAL_PATH). Turn off the analyzer’s self-update mechanism (using: GEMNASIUM_DB_UPDATE_DISABLED). In this example, the database directory is created in the before_script, before the gemnasium analyzer’s scan job:

...

gemnasium-dependency_scanning:
  variables:
    GEMNASIUM_DB_LOCAL_PATH: ./gemnasium-db-local
    GEMNASIUM_DB_UPDATE_DISABLED: "true"
  before_script:
    - mkdir $GEMNASIUM_DB_LOCAL_PATH
    - tar -xzf gemnasium_db.tar.gz -C $GEMNASIUM_DB_LOCAL_PATH

Warnings

Python projects

Extra care needs to be taken when using the PIP_EXTRA_INDEX_URL environment variable due to a possible exploit documented by CVE-2018-20225:

An issue was discovered in pip (all versions) because it installs the version with the highest version number, even if the user had intended to obtain a private package from a private index. This only affects use of the PIP_EXTRA_INDEX_URL option, and exploitation requires that the package does not already exist in the public index (and thus the attacker can put the package there with an arbitrary version number).

Limitations

Referencing local dependencies using a path in JavaScript projects

The Retire.js analyzer doesn’t support dependency references made with local paths in the package.json of JavaScript projects. The dependency scan outputs the following error for such references:

ERROR: Could not find dependencies: <dependency-name>. You may need to run npm install

As a workaround, add the retire.js analyzer to DS_EXCLUDED_ANALYZERS.

Troubleshooting

Working around missing support for certain languages or package managers

As noted in the “Supported languages” section some dependency definition files are not yet supported. However, Dependency Scanning can be achieved if the language, a package manager, or a third-party tool can convert the definition file into a supported format.

Generally, the approach is the following:

1. Define a dedicated converter job in your .gitlab-ci.yml file. Use a suitable Docker image, script, or both to facilitate the conversion.
2. Let that job upload the converted, supported file as an artifact.
3. Add dependencies: [<your-converter-job>] to your dependency_scanning job to make use of the converted definitions files.

For example, the currently unsupported poetry.lock file can be converted to the supported requirements.txt as follows.

include:
  - template: Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml

stages:
  - .pre
  - test

variables:
  PIP_REQUIREMENTS_FILE: "requirements-converted.txt"

convert-poetry:
  stage: .pre
  image: python:3-slim
  script:
    - pip install poetry  # Or via another method: https://python-poetry.org/docs/#installation
    - poetry export --output "$PIP_REQUIREMENTS_FILE"
  artifacts:
    paths:
      - "$PIP_REQUIREMENTS_FILE"

dependency_scanning:
  stage: test
  dependencies: ["convert-poetry"]

Error response from daemon: error processing tar file: docker-tar: relocation error

This error occurs when the Docker version that runs the dependency scanning job is 19.03.0. Consider updating to Docker 19.03.1 or greater. Older versions are not affected. Read more in this issue.

Getting warning message gl-dependency-scanning-report.json: no matching files

For information on this, see the general Application Security troubleshooting section.

Limitation when using rules:exists

The dependency scanning CI template uses the rules:exists syntax. This directive is limited to 10000 checks and always returns true after reaching this number. Because of this, and depending on the number of files in your repository, a dependency scanning job might be triggered even if the scanner doesn’t support your project.

Issues building projects with npm or yarn packages relying on Python 2

Python 2 was removed from the retire.js analyzer in GitLab 13.7 (analyzer version 2.10.1). Projects using packages with a dependency on this version of Python should use retire.js version 2.10.0 or lower (for example, registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/analyzers/retire.js:2.10.0).

Error: dependency_scanning is used for configuration only, and its script should not be executed

For information on this, see the GitLab Secure troubleshooting section.