debian-mirror-gitlab/doc/user/application_security/sast/index.md

type
reference, howto

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (ULTIMATE)

Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 10.3.

NOTE: 4 of the top 6 attacks were application based. Download our whitepaper, "A Seismic Shift in Application Security" to learn how to protect your organization.

Overview

If you are using GitLab CI/CD, you can analyze your source code for known vulnerabilities using Static Application Security Testing (SAST).

You can take advantage of SAST by either including the CI job in your existing .gitlab-ci.yml file or by implicitly using Auto SAST that is provided by Auto DevOps.

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

The results are sorted by the priority of the vulnerability:

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

Use cases

• Your code has a potentially dangerous attribute in a class, or unsafe code that can lead to unintended code execution.
• Your application is vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks that can be leveraged to unauthorized access to session data.

Requirements

To run a SAST job, you need GitLab Runner with the docker or kubernetes executor running in privileged mode. If you're using the shared Runners on GitLab.com, this is enabled by default.

CAUTION: Caution: If you use your own Runners, make sure that the Docker version you have installed is not 19.03.00. See troubleshooting information for details.

Supported languages and frameworks

The following table shows which languages, package managers and frameworks are supported and which tools are used.

Language (package managers) / framework	Scan tool	Introduced in GitLab Version
.NET	Security Code Scan	11.0
Any	Gitleaks and TruffleHog	11.9
Apex (Salesforce)	pmd	12.1
C/C++	Flawfinder	10.7
Elixir (Phoenix)	Sobelow	11.10
Go	Gosec	10.7
Groovy (Ant, Gradle, Maven and SBT)	SpotBugs with the find-sec-bugs plugin	11.3 (Gradle) & 11.9 (Ant, Maven, SBT)
Java (Ant, Gradle, Maven and SBT)	SpotBugs with the find-sec-bugs plugin	10.6 (Maven), 10.8 (Gradle) & 11.9 (Ant, SBT)
Javascript	ESLint security plugin	11.8
Node.js	NodeJsScan	11.1
PHP	phpcs-security-audit	10.8
Python (pip)	bandit	10.3
Ruby on Rails	brakeman	10.3
Scala (Ant, Gradle, Maven and SBT)	SpotBugs with the find-sec-bugs plugin	11.0 (SBT) & 11.9 (Ant, Gradle, Maven)
Typescript	TSLint config security	11.9

NOTE: Note: The Java analyzers can also be used for variants like the Gradle wrapper, Grails and the Maven wrapper.

Configuration

For GitLab 11.9 and later, to enable SAST, you must include the SAST.gitlab-ci.yml template that's 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: SAST.gitlab-ci.yml

The included template will create a sast job in your CI/CD pipeline and scan your project's source code for possible vulnerabilities.

The results will be saved as a SAST report artifact that you can later download and analyze. Due to implementation limitations, we always take the latest SAST artifact available. Behind the scenes, the GitLab SAST Docker image is used to detect the languages/frameworks and in turn runs the matching scan tools.

Customizing the SAST settings

The SAST settings can be changed through environment variables by using the variables parameter in .gitlab-ci.yml. These variables are documented in the SAST tool documentation.

In the following example, we include the SAST template and at the same time we set the SAST_GOSEC_LEVEL variable to 2:

include:
  template: SAST.gitlab-ci.yml

variables:
  SAST_GOSEC_LEVEL: 2

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

Using a variable to pass username and password to a private Maven repository

If you have a private Apache Maven repository that requires login credentials, you can use the MAVEN_CLI_OPTS environment variable to pass a username and password. You can set it under your project's settings so that your credentials aren't exposed in .gitlab-ci.yml.

If the username is myuser and the password is verysecret then you would set the following variable under your project's settings:

Type	Key	Value
Variable	MAVEN_CLI_OPTS	-Drepository.password=verysecret -Drepository.user=myuser

Overriding the SAST template

If you want to override the job definition (for example, change properties like variables or dependencies), you need to declare a sast job after the template inclusion and specify any additional keys under it. For example:

include:
  template: SAST.gitlab-ci.yml

sast:
  variables:
    CI_DEBUG_TRACE: "true"

Available variables

SAST can be configured using environment variables.

Docker images

The following are Docker image-related variables.

Environment variable	Description
SAST_ANALYZER_IMAGES	Comma separated list of custom images. Default images are still enabled. Read more about customizing analyzers.
SAST_ANALYZER_IMAGE_PREFIX	Override the name of the Docker registry providing the default images (proxy). Read more about customizing analyzers.
SAST_ANALYZER_IMAGE_TAG	Override the Docker tag of the default images. Read more about customizing analyzers.
SAST_DEFAULT_ANALYZERS	Override the names of default images. Read more about customizing analyzers.
SAST_PULL_ANALYZER_IMAGES	Pull the images from the Docker registry (set to 0 to disable). Read more about customizing analyzers.

Vulnerability filters

Some analyzers make it possible to filter out vulnerabilities under a given threshold.

Environment variable	Default value	Description	Example usage
SAST_BANDIT_EXCLUDED_PATHS	-	comma-separated list of paths to exclude from scan. Uses Python's fnmatch syntax
SAST_BRAKEMAN_LEVEL	1	Ignore Brakeman vulnerabilities under given confidence level. Integer, 1=Low 3=High.
SAST_FLAWFINDER_LEVEL	1	Ignore Flawfinder vulnerabilities under given risk level. Integer, 0=No risk, 5=High risk.
SAST_GITLEAKS_ENTROPY_LEVEL	8.0	Minimum entropy for secret detection. Float, 0.0 = low, 8.0 = high.
SAST_GOSEC_LEVEL	0	Ignore gosec vulnerabilities under given confidence level. Integer, 0=Undefined, 1=Low, 2=Medium, 3=High.
SAST_EXCLUDED_PATHS	-	Exclude vulnerabilities from output based on the paths. This is a comma-separated list of patterns. Patterns can be globs, file or folder paths. Parent directories will also match patterns.	SAST_EXCLUDED_PATHS=doc,spec

Timeouts

The following variables configure timeouts.

Environment variable	Default value	Description
SAST_DOCKER_CLIENT_NEGOTIATION_TIMEOUT	2m	Time limit for Docker client negotiation. Timeouts are parsed using Go's ParseDuration. Valid time units are "ns", "us" (or "µs"), "ms", "s", "m", "h". For example, "300ms", "1.5h" or "2h45m".
SAST_PULL_ANALYZER_IMAGE_TIMEOUT	5m	Time limit when pulling the image of an analyzer. Timeouts are parsed using Go's ParseDuration. Valid time units are "ns", "us" (or "µs"), "ms", "s", "m", "h". For example, "300ms", "1.5h" or "2h45m".
SAST_RUN_ANALYZER_TIMEOUT	20m	Time limit when running an analyzer. Timeouts are parsed using Go's ParseDuration. Valid time units are "ns", "us" (or "µs"), "ms", "s", "m", "h". For example, "300ms", "1.5h" or "2h45m".

Analyzer settings

Some analyzers can be customized with environment variables.

Environment variable	Analyzer	Description
ANT_HOME	spotbugs	The ANT_HOME environment variable.
ANT_PATH	spotbugs	Path to the ant executable.
GRADLE_PATH	spotbugs	Path to the gradle executable.
JAVA_OPTS	spotbugs	Additional arguments for the java executable.
JAVA_PATH	spotbugs	Path to the java executable.
SAST_JAVA_VERSION	spotbugs	Which Java version to use. Supported versions are 8 and 11. Defaults to 8.
MAVEN_CLI_OPTS	spotbugs	Additional arguments for the mvn or mvnw executable.
MAVEN_PATH	spotbugs	Path to the mvn executable.
MAVEN_REPO_PATH	spotbugs	Path to the Maven local repository (shortcut for the maven.repo.local property).
SBT_PATH	spotbugs	Path to the sbt executable.
FAIL_NEVER	spotbugs	Set to 1 to ignore compilation failure.

Reports JSON format

CAUTION: Caution: The JSON report artifacts are not a public API of SAST and their format may change in the future.

The SAST tool emits a JSON report report file. Here is an example of the report structure with all important parts of it highlighted:

{
  "version": "2.0",
  "vulnerabilities": [
    {
      "category": "sast",
      "name": "Predictable pseudorandom number generator",
      "message": "Predictable pseudorandom number generator",
      "description": "The use of java.util.Random is predictable",
      "cve": "818bf5dacb291e15d9e6dc3c5ac32178:PREDICTABLE_RANDOM",
      "severity": "Medium",
      "confidence": "Medium",
      "scanner": {
        "id": "find_sec_bugs",
        "name": "Find Security Bugs"
      },
      "location": {
        "file": "groovy/src/main/groovy/com/gitlab/security_products/tests/App.groovy",
        "start_line": 47,
        "end_line": 47,
        "class": "com.gitlab.security_products.tests.App",
        "method": "generateSecretToken2",
        "dependency": {
          "package": {}
        }
      },
      "identifiers": [
        {
          "type": "find_sec_bugs_type",
          "name": "Find Security Bugs-PREDICTABLE_RANDOM",
          "value": "PREDICTABLE_RANDOM",
          "url": "https://find-sec-bugs.github.io/bugs.htm#PREDICTABLE_RANDOM"
        },
        {
          "type": "cwe",
          "name": "CWE-330",
          "value": "330",
          "url": "https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/330.html"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "category": "sast",
      "message": "Probable insecure usage of temp file/directory.",
      "cve": "python/hardcoded/hardcoded-tmp.py:4ad6d4c40a8c263fc265f3384724014e0a4f8dd6200af83e51ff120420038031:B108",
      "severity": "Medium",
      "confidence": "Medium",
      "scanner": {
        "id": "bandit",
        "name": "Bandit"
      },
      "location": {
        "file": "python/hardcoded/hardcoded-tmp.py",
        "start_line": 10,
        "end_line": 10,
        "dependency": {
          "package": {}
        }
      },
      "identifiers": [
        {
          "type": "bandit_test_id",
          "name": "Bandit Test ID B108",
          "value": "B108",
          "url": "https://docs.openstack.org/bandit/latest/plugins/b108_hardcoded_tmp_directory.html"
        }
      ]
    },
  ],
  "remediations": []
}

Here is the description of the report file structure nodes and their meaning. All fields are mandatory to be present in the report JSON unless stated otherwise. Presence of optional fields depends on the underlying analyzers being used.

Report JSON node	Function
version	Report syntax version used to generate this JSON.
vulnerabilities	Array of vulnerability objects.
vulnerabilities[].category	Where this vulnerability belongs (SAST, Dependency Scanning etc.). For SAST, it will always be sast.
vulnerabilities[].name	Name of the vulnerability, this must not include the occurrence's specific information. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].message	A short text that describes the vulnerability, it may include the occurrence's specific information. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].description	A long text that describes the vulnerability. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].cve	A fingerprint string value that represents a concrete occurrence of the vulnerability. Is used to determine whether two vulnerability occurrences are same or different. May not be 100% accurate. This is NOT a CVE.
vulnerabilities[].severity	How much the vulnerability impacts the software. Possible values: Undefined (an analyzer has not provided this info), Info, Unknown, Low, Medium, High, Critical.
vulnerabilities[].confidence	How reliable the vulnerability's assessment is. Possible values: Undefined (an analyzer has not provided this info), Ignore, Unknown, Experimental, Low, Medium, High, Confirmed.
vulnerabilities[].solution	Explanation of how to fix the vulnerability. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].scanner	A node that describes the analyzer used to find this vulnerability.
vulnerabilities[].scanner.id	Id of the scanner as a snake_case string.
vulnerabilities[].scanner.name	Name of the scanner, for display purposes.
vulnerabilities[].location	A node that tells where the vulnerability is located.
vulnerabilities[].location.file	Path to the file where the vulnerability is located. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].location.start_line	The first line of the code affected by the vulnerability. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].location.end_line	The last line of the code affected by the vulnerability. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].location.class	If specified, provides the name of the class where the vulnerability is located. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].location.method	If specified, provides the name of the method where the vulnerability is located. Optional.
vulnerabilities[].identifiers	An ordered array of references that identify a vulnerability on internal or external DBs.
vulnerabilities[].identifiers[].type	Type of the identifier. Possible values: common identifier types (among cve, cwe, osvdb, and usn) or analyzer-dependent ones (e.g., bandit_test_id for Bandit analyzer).
vulnerabilities[].identifiers[].name	Name of the identifier for display purposes.
vulnerabilities[].identifiers[].value	Value of the identifier for matching purposes.
vulnerabilities[].identifiers[].url	URL to identifier's documentation. Optional.

Secret detection

GitLab is also able to detect secrets and credentials that have been unintentionally pushed to the repository. For example, an API key that allows write access to third-party deployment environments.

This check is performed by a specific analyzer during the sast job. It runs regardless of the programming language of your app, and you don't need to change anything to your CI/CD configuration file to turn it on. Results are available in the SAST report.

GitLab currently includes Gitleaks and TruffleHog checks.

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.

Interacting with the vulnerabilities

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

Vulnerabilities database update

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

Troubleshooting

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

This error occurs when the Docker version used to run the SAST job is 19.03.00. You are advised to update to Docker 19.03.01 or greater. Older versions are not affected. Read more in this issue.