Continuous Vulnerability Scanning

Tier: Ultimate Offering: GitLab.com, Self-managed, GitLab Dedicated
History
  • Continuous dependency scanning introduced with feature flags dependency_scanning_on_advisory_ingestion and package_metadata_advisory_scans enabled by default.
  • Generally available in GitLab 16.10. Feature flags dependency_scanning_on_advisory_ingestion and package_metadata_advisory_scans removed.
  • Continuous container scanning introduced in GitLab 16.8 with a flag named container_scanning_continuous_vulnerability_scans. Disabled by default.
  • Continuous container scanning enabled on self-managed, and GitLab Dedicated in GitLab 16.10.
  • Generally available in GitLab 17.0. Feature flag container_scanning_continuous_vulnerability_scans removed.
  • CVS triggering on new components has been introduced in GitLab 17.3 with a flag named dependency_scanning_using_sbom_reports. Disabled by default.

Continuous Vulnerability Scanning looks for security vulnerabilities in your project’s dependencies by comparing their component names and versions against information in the latest security advisories.

When security advisories are added or updated, Continuous Vulnerability Scanning triggers a scan on all projects where components with supported package types exist. If an advisory affects a dependency, Continuous Vulnerability Scanning creates a vulnerability in the project.

Vulnerabilities created by Continuous Vulnerability Scanning use GitLab SBoM Vulnerability Scanner as the scanner name.

In contrast to CI-based security scans, Continuous Vulnerability Scanning is executed through background jobs (Sidekiq) rather than CI pipelines and no Security report artifacts are generated.

Prerequisites

note
If a new component is detected, and an advisory for it already exists, a vulnerability is only created if the feature flag dependency_scanning_using_sbom_reports is enabled. Support for this feature can be tracked in epic 8026.

Supported package types

Continuous Vulnerability Scanning supports components with the following PURL types:

  • composer
  • conan
  • deb
  • gem
  • golang
  • maven
  • npm
  • nuget
  • pypi
  • rpm
  • apk

Go pseudo versions are not supported. A project dependency that references a Go pseudo version is never considered as affected because this might result in false negatives.

RPM versions containing ^ are not supported. Work to support these versions is tracked in issue 459969. APK versions containing leading zeros are not supported. Work to support these versions is tracked in issue 471509

How to generate a CycloneDX SBOM report

Use a CycloneDX SBOM report to register your project components with GitLab.

GitLab offers security analyzers that can generate a report compatible with GitLab:

Checking new vulnerabilities

New vulnerabilities detected by Continuous Vulnerability Scanning are visible on the Vulnerability Report. However, they are not listed on the Dependency List or in the pipeline where the affected SBOM component was detected.

After a security advisory is published, it might take a few hours before the corresponding vulnerabilities are added to your projects. Only advisories published within the last 14 days are considered for Continuous Vulnerability Scanning.

When vulnerabilities are no longer detected

Continuous Vulnerability Scanning automatically creates vulnerabilities when a new advisory is published but it is not able to tell when a vulnerability is no longer present in the project. To do so, GitLab still requires to have a Container Scanning or a Dependency Scanning scan executed in a pipeline for the default branch, and a corresponding security report artifact generated with the up to date information. When these reports are processed, and when they no longer contain some vulnerabilities, these are flagged as such even if they were created by Continuous Vulnerability Scanning. This behavior has been introduced in 17.1 with issue 441490 and applies to scanners maintained by GitLab (Trivy, gemnasium, gemnasium-python, gemnasium-maven).

Improvements to this behavior, including requiring only to have a updated SBOM uploaded, are planned in epic 8026.

Security advisories

Continuous Vulnerability Scanning uses the Package Metadata Database, a service managed by GitLab which aggregates license and security advisory data, and regularly publishes updates that are used by GitLab.com and self-managed instances.

On GitLab.com, the synchronization is managed by GitLab and is available to all projects.

On GitLab self-managed, you can choose package registry metadata to synchronize in the Admin area for the GitLab instance.

Data sources

Current data sources for security advisories include:

Contributing to the vulnerability database

To find a vulnerability, you can search the GitLab Advisory Database. You can also submit new vulnerabilities.