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stage | group | info | type |
---|---|---|---|
Secure | Static Analysis | To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments | reference, howto |
Secure your application (ULTIMATE)
GitLab can check your application for security vulnerabilities including:
- Unauthorized access.
- Data leaks.
- Denial of service attacks.
Statistics and details on vulnerabilities are included in the merge request. Providing actionable information before changes are merged enables you to be proactive.
INFO: Want to try out security scanning? Try GitLab Ultimate free for 30 days.
GitLab also provides high-level statistics of vulnerabilities across projects and groups:
- The Security Dashboard provides a high-level view of vulnerabilities detected in your projects, pipeline, and groups.
- The Threat Monitoring page provides runtime security metrics for application environments. With the information provided, you can immediately begin risk analysis and remediation.
For an overview of GitLab application security, see Shifting Security Left.
Security scanning tools
GitLab uses the following tools to scan and report known vulnerabilities found in your project.
Secure scanning tool | Description |
---|---|
Container Scanning | Scan Docker containers for known vulnerabilities. |
Dependency List | View your project's dependencies and their known vulnerabilities. |
Dependency Scanning | Analyze your dependencies for known vulnerabilities. |
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) | Analyze running web applications for known vulnerabilities. |
DAST API | Analyze running web APIs for known vulnerabilities. |
API fuzzing | Find unknown bugs and vulnerabilities in web APIs with fuzzing. |
Secret Detection | Analyze Git history for leaked secrets. |
Security Dashboard | View vulnerabilities in all your projects and groups. |
Static Application Security Testing (SAST) | Analyze source code for known vulnerabilities. |
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Scanning | Analyze your IaC coniguration files for known vulnerabilities. |
Coverage fuzzing | Find unknown bugs and vulnerabilities with coverage-guided fuzzing. |
Cluster Image Scanning | Scan Kubernetes clusters for known vulnerabilities. |
Security scanning with Auto DevOps
To enable all GitLab Security scanning tools, with default settings, enable Auto DevOps:
- Auto SAST
- Auto Secret Detection
- Auto DAST
- Auto Dependency Scanning
- Auto License Compliance
- Auto Container Scanning
While you cannot directly customize Auto DevOps, you can include the Auto DevOps template in your project's .gitlab-ci.yml
file.
Security scanning without Auto DevOps
To enable all GitLab security scanning tools, with the option of customizing settings, add the
GitLab CI/CD templates to your .gitlab-ci.yml
file.
To enable Static Application Security Testing, Dependency Scanning, License Scanning, and Secret Detection, add:
include:
- template: Security/Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml
To enable Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) scanning, add the following to your
.gitlab-ci.yml
. Replace https://staging.example.com
with a staging server's web address:
include:
- template: Security/DAST.gitlab-ci.yml
variables:
DAST_WEBSITE: https://staging.example.com
For more details about each of the security scanning tools, see their respective documentation sections.
Override the default registry base address
By default, GitLab security scanners use registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/analyzers
as the
base address for Docker images. You can override this globally by setting the CI/CD variable
SECURE_ANALYZERS_PREFIX
to another location. Note that this affects all scanners at once, except
the container-scanning analyzer which uses
registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning
as its registry.
Use security scanning tools with Pipelines for Merge Requests
By default, the application security jobs are configured to run for branch pipelines only.
To use them with pipelines for merge requests,
you may need to override the default rules:
configuration to add:
rules:
- if: $CI_PIPELINE_SOURCE == "merge_request_event"
Default behavior of GitLab security scanning tools
Secure jobs in your pipeline
If you add the security scanning jobs as described in Security scanning with Auto DevOps or Security scanning without Auto DevOps to your .gitlab-ci.yml
each added security scanning tool behave as described below.
For each compatible analyzer, a job is created in the test
, dast
or fuzz
stage of your pipeline and runs on the next new branch pipeline. Features such as the Security Dashboard, Vulnerability Report, and Dependency List that rely on this scan data only show results from pipelines on the default branch. One tool might use many analyzers.
Our language and package manager specific jobs attempt to assess which analyzer(s) they should run for your project so that you can do less configuration.
If you want to override this to increase the pipeline speed you may choose which analyzers to exclude if you know they are not applicable (languages or package managers not contained in your project) by following variable customization directions for that specific tool.
Secure job status
Jobs pass if they are able to complete a scan. A pass result does NOT indicate if they did, or did not, identify findings. The only exception is coverage fuzzing, which fails if it identifies findings.
Jobs fail if they are unable to complete a scan. You can view the pipeline logs for more information.
All jobs are permitted to fail by default. This means that if they fail it do not fail the pipeline.
If you want to prevent vulnerabilities from being merged, you should do this by adding Security Approvals in Merge Requests which prevents unknown, high or critical findings from being merged without an approval from a specific group of people that you choose.
We do not recommend changing the job allow_failure
setting as that fails the entire pipeline.
JSON Artifact
The artifact generated by the secure analyzer contains all findings it discovers on the target branch, regardless of whether they were previously found, dismissed, or completely new (it puts in everything that it finds).
View security scan information in merge requests (FREE)
- Introduced in GitLab Free 13.5.
- Made available in all tiers in 13.6.
- Report download dropdown added in 13.7.
- Feature flag removed in GitLab 13.9.
All tiers
Merge requests which have run security scans let you know that the generated reports are available to download. To download a report, click on the Download results dropdown, and select the desired report.
Ultimate
A merge request contains a security widget which displays a summary of the NEW results. New results are determined by comparing the current findings against existing findings in the target (default) branch (if there are prior findings).
We recommended you run a scan of the default
branch before enabling feature branch scans for your developers. Otherwise, there is no base for comparison and all feature branches display the full scan results in the merge request security widget.
The merge request security widget displays only a subset of the vulnerabilities in the generated JSON artifact because it contains both NEW and EXISTING findings.
From the merge request security widget, select Expand to unfold the widget, displaying any new and no longer detected (removed) findings by scan type. Select View full report to go directly to the Security tab in the latest branch pipeline.
View security scan information in the pipeline Security tab
A pipeline's security tab lists all findings in the current branch. It includes new findings introduced by this branch and existing vulnerabilities that were already present when the branch was created. These results likely do not match the findings displayed in the Merge Request security widget as those do not include the existing vulnerabilities (with the exception of showing any existing vulnerabilities that are no longer detected in the feature branch).
For more details, see security tab.
View security scan information in the Security Dashboard
The Security Dashboard show vulnerabilities present in a project's default branch. Data is updated every 24 hours. Vulnerability count updates resulting from any feature branches introducing new vulnerabilities that are merged to default are included after the daily data refresh.
For more details, see Security Dashboard.
View security scan information in the Vulnerability Report
The vulnerability report shows the results of the last completed pipeline on the default branch. It is updated on every pipeline completion. All detected vulnerabilities are shown as well as any previous ones that are no longer detected in the latest scan. Vulnerabilities that are no longer detected may have been remediated or otherwise removed and can be marked as Resolved
after proper verification. Vulnerabilities that are no longer detected are denoted with an icon for filtering and review.
By default, the vulnerability report does not show vulnerabilities of dismissed
or resolved
status so you can focus on open vulnerabilities. You can change the Status filter to see these.
Read more about the Vulnerability report.
Security approvals in merge requests
Introduced in GitLab 12.2.
You can enforce an additional approval for merge requests that would introduce one of the following security issues:
- A security vulnerability. For more details, read Vulnerability-Check rule.
- A software license compliance violation. For more details, read Enabling license approvals within a project.
Vulnerability-Check rule
To prevent a merge request introducing a security vulnerability in a project, enable the Vulnerability-Check rule. While this rule is enabled, additional merge request approval by eligible approvers is required when the latest security report in a merge request:
- Contains vulnerabilities with states (for example,
previously detected
,dismissed
) matching the rule's vulnerability states. Onlynewly detected
will be considered if the target branch differs from the project default branch. - Contains vulnerabilities with severity levels (for example,
high
,critical
, orunknown
) matching the rule's severity levels. - Contains a vulnerability count higher than the rule allows.
- Is not yet generated (until pipeline completion).
An approval is optional when the security report:
- Contains only vulnerabilities with states (for example,
newly detected
,resolved
) NOT matching the rule's vulnerability states. - Contains only vulnerabilities with severity levels (for example,
low
,medium
) NOT matching the rule's severity levels. - Contains a vulnerability count equal to or less than what the rule allows.
Project members assigned at least the Maintainer role can enable or edit the Vulnerability-Check rule.
Enable the Vulnerability-Check rule
To enable or edit the Vulnerability-Check rule:
- On the top bar, select Menu > Projects and find your project.
- On the left sidebar, select Settings > General.
- Expand Merge request approvals.
- Select Activate or Edit of the Vulnerability-Check.
- Complete the fields. Approvals required must be at least 1.
- Select Add approval rule.
The approval rule is enabled for all merge requests. Any code changes reset the approvals required.
Using private Maven repositories
If you have a private Apache Maven repository that requires login credentials,
you can use the MAVEN_CLI_OPTS
CI/CD 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 |
--settings mysettings.xml -Drepository.password=verysecret -Drepository.user=myuser |
<!-- mysettings.xml -->
<settings>
...
<servers>
<server>
<id>private_server</id>
<username>${private.username}</username>
<password>${private.password}</password>
</server>
</servers>
</settings>
Using a custom scanning stage
When security scanning is enabled by including CI/CD templates as described in the
Security scanning without Auto DevOps section, the scanning jobs
use the predefined test
stage by default. If you specify a custom stage in your .gitlab-ci.yml
file without
including a test
stage, an error occurs.
For example, the following attempts to use a unit-tests
stage:
include:
- template: Security/Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml
stages:
- unit-tests
custom job:
stage: unit-tests
script:
- echo "custom job"
The above .gitlab-ci.yml
causes a linting error:
Found errors in your .gitlab-ci.yml:
- dependency_scanning job: chosen stage does not exist; available stages are .pre
- unit-tests
- .post
This error appears because the test
stage used by the security scanning jobs isn't declared in the .gitlab-ci.yml
file.
To fix this issue, you can either:
-
Add a
test
stage in your.gitlab-ci.yml
:include: - template: Security/Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml - template: Security/License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml - template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml - template: Security/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml stages: - test - unit-tests custom job: stage: unit-tests script: - echo "custom job"
-
Override the default stage of each security job. For example, to use a pre-defined stage named
unit-tests
:include: - template: Security/Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml - template: Security/License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml - template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml - template: Security/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml stages: - unit-tests dependency_scanning: stage: unit-tests license_scanning: stage: unit-tests sast: stage: unit-tests .secret-analyzer: stage: unit-tests custom job: stage: unit-tests script: - echo "custom job"
Learn more on overriding security jobs:
- Overriding SAST jobs.
- Overriding Dependency Scanning jobs.
- Overriding Container Scanning jobs.
- Overriding Secret Detection jobs.
- Overriding DAST jobs.
- Overriding License Compliance jobs.
All the security scanning tools define their stage, so this error can occur with all of them.
Security report validation
- Introduced in GitLab 13.11.
- Schema validation message added in GitLab 14.0.
You can enforce validation of the security report artifacts before ingesting the vulnerabilities. This prevents ingestion of broken vulnerability data into the database. GitLab validates the artifacts based on the report schemas.
In GitLab 14.0 and later, when artifact validation is enabled, the pipeline's Security tab lists any report artifacts that failed validation.
Enable security report validation
To enable report artifacts validation, set the VALIDATE_SCHEMA
environment variable to "true"
for the desired jobs in the .gitlab-ci.yml
file.
For example, to enable validation for only the sast
job:
include:
- template: Security/Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/License-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
- template: Security/Secret-Detection.gitlab-ci.yml
stages:
- security-scan
dependency_scanning:
stage: security-scan
license_scanning:
stage: security-scan
sast:
stage: security-scan
variables:
VALIDATE_SCHEMA: "true"
.secret-analyzer:
stage: security-scan
Interact with findings and vulnerabilities
You can interact with the results of the security scanning tools in several locations:
- Scan information in merge requests
- Project Security Dashboard
- Security pipeline tab
- Group Security Dashboard
- Security Center
- Vulnerability Report
- Vulnerability Pages
- Dependency List
For more details about which findings or vulnerabilities you can view in each of those locations, select the respective link. Each page details the ways in which you can interact with the findings and vulnerabilities. As an example, in most cases findings start out as detected status.
You have the option to:
- Change the status.
- Create an issue.
- Link it to an existing issue.
- Resolve the vulnerability, if a solution is known.
Security scanning configuration tips
Each GitLab security scanning tool has a default CI/CD configuration file, also known as a template.
When customizing the configuration:
- Include the scanning tool's CI/CD template. Don't copy the content of the template.
- Use the stable version of each template for production workflows. The stable version changes less often, and breaking changes are only made between major GitLab versions. The latest version contains the most recent changes, but may have significant changes between minor GitLab versions.
- Only override values in the template as needed. All other values are inherited from the template.
Troubleshooting
Secure job failing with exit code 1
If a Secure job is failing and it's unclear why, add SECURE_LOG_LEVEL: "debug"
as a global CI/CD variable for
more verbose output that is helpful for troubleshooting.
variables:
SECURE_LOG_LEVEL: "debug"
Outdated security reports
When a security report generated for a merge request becomes outdated, the merge request shows a warning message in the security widget and prompts you to take an appropriate action.
This can happen in two scenarios:
Source branch is behind the target branch
A security report can be out of date when the most recent common ancestor commit between the target branch and the source branch is not the most recent commit on the target branch.
To fix this issue, rebase or merge to incorporate the changes from the target branch.
Target branch security report is out of date
This can happen for many reasons, including failed jobs or new advisories. When the merge request shows that a security report is out of date, you must run a new pipeline on the target branch. Select new pipeline to run a new pipeline.
Getting warning messages … report.json: no matching files
This message is often followed by the error No files to upload
,
and preceded by other errors or warnings that indicate why the JSON report wasn't generated. Check
the entire job log for such messages. If you don't find these messages, retry the failed job after
setting SECURE_LOG_LEVEL: "debug"
as a custom CI/CD variable.
This provides extra information to investigate further.
Getting error message sast job: config key may not be used with 'rules': only/except
When including a .gitlab-ci.yml
template
like SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
,
the following error may occur, depending on your GitLab CI/CD configuration:
Found errors in your .gitlab-ci.yml:
jobs:sast config key may not be used with `rules`: only/except
This error appears when the included job's rules
configuration has been overridden
with the deprecated only
or except
syntax.
To fix this issue, you must either:
- Transition your
only/except
syntax torules
. - (Temporarily) Pin your templates to the deprecated versions
Learn more on overriding SAST jobs.
Transitioning your only/except
syntax to rules
When overriding the template to control job execution, previous instances of
only
or except
are no longer compatible
and must be transitioned to the rules
syntax.
If your override is aimed at limiting jobs to only run on master
, the previous syntax
would look similar to:
include:
- template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
# Ensure that the scanning is only executed on master or merge requests
spotbugs-sast:
only:
refs:
- master
- merge_requests
To transition the above configuration to the new rules
syntax, the override
would be written as follows:
include:
- template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
# Ensure that the scanning is only executed on master or merge requests
spotbugs-sast:
rules:
- if: $CI_COMMIT_BRANCH == "master"
- if: $CI_MERGE_REQUEST_ID
If your override is aimed at limiting jobs to only run on branches, not tags, it would look similar to:
include:
- template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
# Ensure that the scanning is not executed on tags
spotbugs-sast:
except:
- tags
To transition to the new rules
syntax, the override would be rewritten as:
include:
- template: Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
# Ensure that the scanning is not executed on tags
spotbugs-sast:
rules:
- if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG == null
Learn more on the usage of rules
.
Pin your templates to the deprecated versions
To ensure the latest support, we strongly recommend that you migrate to rules
.
If you're unable to immediately update your CI configuration, there are several workarounds that involve pinning to the previous template versions, for example:
include:
remote: 'https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/raw/12-10-stable-ee/lib/gitlab/ci/templates/Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml'
Additionally, we provide a dedicated project containing the versioned legacy templates. This can be used for offline setups or anyone wishing to use Auto DevOps.
Instructions are available in the legacy template project.
Vulnerabilities are found, but the job succeeds. How can I have a pipeline fail instead?
In these circumstances, that the job succeeds is the default behavior. The job's status indicates success or failure of the analyzer itself. Analyzer results are displayed in the job logs, Merge Request widget or Security Dashboard.
Error: job is used for configuration only, and its script should not be executed
Changes made in GitLab 13.4
to the Security/Dependency-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
and Security/SAST.gitlab-ci.yml
templates mean that if you enable the sast
or dependency_scanning
jobs by setting the rules
attribute,
they fail with the error (job) is used for configuration only, and its script should not be executed
.
The sast
or dependency_scanning
stanzas can be used to make changes to all SAST or Dependency Scanning,
such as changing variables
or the stage
, but they cannot be used to define shared rules
.
There is an issue open to improve extendability. Please upvote the issue to help with prioritization, and contributions are welcomed.