Red Hat Dependency Analytics

Red Hat's Dependency Analytics (RHDA) extension gives you awareness to security concerns within your software supply chain while you build your application. The Red Hat Dependency Analytics extension uses the Snyk REST API to query Snyk's Vulnerability Database for the most up-to-date vulnerability information available. Snyk uses industry-leading security intelligence by pulling from many data sources to give you exact vulnerability information.

NOTE:
The Red Hat Dependency Analytics extension is an online service hosted and maintained by Red Hat. Red Hat Dependency Analytics only accesses your manifest files to analyze your application dependencies before displaying the vulnerability report.

IMPORTANT:
Currently, Red Hat Dependency Analytics only supports projects that use Maven (mvn), Node (npm), Golang (go mod) and Python (pip) ecosystems. In future releases, Red Hat plans to support other programming languages.

Table of Contents

• Red Hat Dependency Analytics - Table of Contents
  • Quick start
  • Configuration
    • Configurable parameters
  • Features
  • Using Red Hat Dependency Analytics for CI builds
  • Know more about the Red Hat Dependency Analytics platform
  • Data and telemetry
  • Support, feedback & questions
  • License

Quick start

Prerequisites

• For Maven projects, analyzing a pom.xml file, you must have the mvn binary in your system’s PATH environment.
• For Node projects, analyzing a package.json file, you must have the npm binary in your system’s PATH environment.
• For Golang projects, analyzing a go.mod file, you must have the go binary in your system’s PATH environment.
• For Python projects, analyzing a requirements.txt file, you must have the python3/pip3 or python/pip binaries in your system’s PATH environment.

IMPORTANT:
Visual Studio Code by default executes binaries directly in a terminal found in your system's PATH environment. You can configure Visual Studio Code to look somewhere else to run the necessary binaries. You can configure this by accessing the extension settings. Click the Workspace tab, search for the word executable, and specify the absolute path to the binary file you want to use for Maven, Node or Golang.

Procedure

1. Install Visual Studio Code on your workstation.
2. After the installation finishes, open the Visual Studio Code application.
3. From the file menu, click View, and click Extensions.
4. Search the Marketplace for Red Hat Dependency Analytics.
5. Click the Install button to install the extension.
6. To start scanning your application for security vulnerabilities, and view the vulnerability report, you can do one of the following:
   • Open a manifest file, hover over a dependency marked by the inline Component Analysis, indicated by the wavy-red line under a version number or dependency name, click Quick Fix, and click Detailed Vulnerability Report.
   • Open a manifest file, and click the pie chart icon .
   • Right click on a manifest file in the Explorer view, and click Red Hat Dependency Analytics Report....
   • From the vulnerability pop-up alert message, click Open detailed vulnerability report.
7. (OPTIONAL) You can link your Snyk account to Red Hat Dependency Analytics by doing the following:
   1. Log into your Snyk account.
   2. On the account landing page, you can find your Snyk Token, copy the token.
   3. Open the Red Hat Dependency Analytics extension settings.
   4. Click the Workspace tab.
   5. Paste the Snyk token in the Exhort Snyk Token field.
   6. After adding your Snyk token, the vulnerability report gives you detailed information about security vulnerabilities unique to Snyk, and vulnerabilities that have publicly known exploits.

Configuration

The Red Hat Dependency Analytics extension has some configurable parameters that allows you to customize its behavior according to your preferences.

Procedure

1. Open the Visual Studio Code application.

2. From the file menu, click View, and click Extensions.

3. Find the installed Red Hat Dependency Analytics extension, and click on the Gear icon.

4. Click Extension Settings.

   

Configurable parameters

Exhort Snyk Token :
The Snyk token allows Exhort to authenticate with the Snyk Vulnerability Database. If a Snyk token is not provided, Snyk vulnerability information is not displayed.

If you leave this field blank, the following informational message is displayed.

If you enter a invalid Snyk token, a pop-up message alerts you that your Snyk token is not valid.

If you need a new Snyk token, you can generate a new token here.

Red Hat Dependency Analytics Report File Path :

Specify the local path to create the Red Hat Dependency Analytics report file. The default path is /tmp/redhatDependencyAnalyticsReport.html.

Features

• Component analysis
  Upon opening a manifest file, such as a pom.xml, package.json, go.mod or requirements.txt file, a scan starts the analysis process. The scan provides immediate inline feedback on detected security vulnerabilities for your application's dependencies. Such dependencies are appropriately underlined in red, and hovering over it gives you a short summary of the security concern. The summary has the full package name, version number, the amount of known security vulnerabilities, and the highest severity status of said vulnerabilities.

  NOTE: Add the target folder to your .gitignore file to exclude it from Git monitoring.

  

• Excluding dependencies with exhortignore
  You can exclude a package from analysis by marking the package for exclusion. If you wish to ignore vulnerabilities for a dependency in a pom.xml file, you must add exhortignore as a comment against the dependency, group id, artifact id, or version scopes of that particular dependency in the manifest file. For example:

    <dependency> <!--exhortignore-->
    	<groupId>...</groupId>
    	<artifactId>...</artifactId>
    	<version>...</version>
    </dependency>
  

  If you wish to ignore vulnerabilities for a dependency in a package.json file, you must add exhortignore as a attribute-value pair. If exhortignore is followed by a list of comma-separated Snyk vulnerability IDs, only the listed vulnerabilities will be ignored during analysis. For example:

    {
    	"name": "sample",
    	"version": "1.0.0",
    	"description": "",
    	"main": "index.js",
    	"keywords": [],
    	"author": "",
    	"license": "ISC",
    	"dependencies": {
    		"dotenv": "^8.2.0",
    		"express": "^4.17.1",
    		"jsonwebtoken": "^8.5.1",
    		"mongoose": "^5.9.18"
    	},
    	"exhortignore": [
    		"jsonwebtoken"
    	]
    }
  

  If you wish to ignore vulnerabilities for a dependency in a go.mod file, you must add exhortignore as a comment against the dependency in the manifest file. For example:

    require (
    	golang.org/x/sys v1.6.7 // exhortignore
    )
  

  If you wish to ignore vulnerabilities for a dependency in a requirements.txt file, you must add exhortignore as a comment against the dependency in the manifest file. For example:

    requests==2.28.1 # exhortignore
  

• Excluding developmental or test dependencies
  Red Hat Dependency Analytics does not analyze dependencies marked as dev or test, these dependencies are ignored.

  For example, setting test in the scope tag within a pom.xml file:

    <dependency>
    	<groupId>...</groupId>
    	<artifactId>...</artifactId>
    	<version>...</version>
    	<scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  

  For example, setting devDependencies attributte in the package.json file:

    {
    	"name": "sample",
    	"version": "1.0.0",
    	"description": "",
    	"main": "index.js",
    	"keywords": [],
    	"author": "",
    	"license": "ISC",
    	"dependencies": {
    		"dotenv": "^8.2.0",
    		"express": "^4.17.1",
    		"jsonwebtoken": "^8.5.1",
    		"mongoose": "^5.9.18"
    	},
    	"devDependencies": {
    		"axios": "^0.19.0"
    	}
    }
  

  For example, setting exclude attributte in the go.mod file:

    exclude golang.org/x/sys v1.6.7
  
    exclude (
    	golang.org/x/sys v1.6.7
    )
  

  For example, creating an alternative file to requirements.txt, like requirements-dev.txt or requirements-test.txt and adding the dev or test dependencies there istead.

• Red Hat Dependency Analytics report
  The Red Hat Dependency Analytics report is a temporary HTML file that exist if the Red Hat Dependency Analytics Report tab remains open. Closing the tab removes the temporary HTML file. You can specify the file name by modifying the Red Hat Dependency Analytics: Red Hat Dependency Analytics Report File Path field in the extension settings.

• Python and Go package manager behavior
  When a user requests a Python or a Go package analysis, Red Hat Dependency Analytics performs the analysis by looking at the version tags from those environments, and not from the manifest files of those environments. This can result in the user receiving information that does not match their intended request. Because of this behavior, Red Hat Dependency Analytics has a new configurable workspace setting. By default, the Match Manifest Versions (MATCH_MANIFEST_VERSIONS) setting restricts Red Hat Dependency Analytics from doing an analysis on package versions that do not match the versions defined by the manifest files. When Red Hat Dependency Analytics finds a package version mis-match, an alert message asks the user to switch this setting. If the user decides to disable this restriction, Red Hat Dependency Analytics performs the analysis on versions given by the package manager only. This setting applies to Python and Go environments.

  
  An alternative workaround exists for Python environments only. The user can start Visual Studio Code with the EXHORT_PYTHON_VIRTUAL_ENV variable set to true. Doing this allows Red Hat Dependency Analytics to install Python packages into a virtual environment to perform the analysis. The benefit is having a clean Python environment not influenced by earlier installations, but the downside is a significantly slower analysis process.

Using Red Hat Dependency Analytics for CI builds

You can automate the analysis of your application's vulnerabilities within the build and release pipeline. Red Hat offers integration with these Continuous Integration (CI) platforms:

• Red Hat Dependency Analytics Tekton Task
• Red Hat Dependency Analytics Jenkins Plugin

Know more about the Red Hat Dependency Analytics platform

The goal of this project is to significantly enhance a developer's experience by providing helpful vulnerability insights for their applications.

• GitHub Organization

Data and telemetry

The Red Hat Dependency Analytics Extension for Visual Studio Code collects anonymous usage data and sends it to Red Hat servers to help improve our products and services. Read our privacy statement to learn more. This extension respects the redhat.telemetry.enabled setting, which you can learn more about here.

Support, feedback & questions

There are two ways you can contact us:

• You can reach out to us at rhda-support@redhat.com with any questions, feedback, and general support.
• You can also file a GitHub Issue.

License

Apache 2.0, See LICENSE for more information.