Forem: willem-delbare

Top 10 Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools in 2025

willem-delbare — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 11:30:46 +0000

Top 10 SCA tools for 2025

85% of the code that we use doesn’t come from our own code, it comes from our open-source components and dependencies. This means attackers can know your code better than you do! SCA tools are our best line of defense to keep our open-source supply chain secure.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tools, also known as open-source dependency scanning, help us understand the risks we have in our open-source supply chain. From known vulnerabilities, risky licenses or malware hidden in innocent-looking libraries.

Understanding the composition of your open-source supply chain can be very difficult and SCA tools have become an integral part of the application's security programs. However, they often are riddled with false positives and unnecessary noise so we wanted to break down precisely what to look for in a good SCA tool and review 10 of the market leaders in SCA right now.

How does Software Composition Analysis Work?

SCA tools provide an ongoing process for detecting vulnerabilities usually by checking our dependencies and versions against known vulnerabilities. Leaders in SCA however will go further and detect packages using high-risk licenses, conduct malware inspection, and even detect when packages are no longer actively maintained. In addition the approach tools take can differ, typically we see 6 different stages within a SCA tool.

1. OSS Dependency Scanning

Scans application codebases, build directories, CI/CD pipelines, and package manager files to identify open-source (OS) dependencies.
Detects both direct dependencies (explicitly declared) and transitive dependencies (inherited).

2. Generating a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM)

Creates an inventory of all OS components with:
- Component names, versions, locations, suppliers/maintainers
- Associated open-source licenses.
Often visualizes dependency relationships for better analysis and identifying potential vulnerabilities/conflicts.

3. Vulnerability Assessment

Compares the SBOM against databases like NVD, CVE, GitHub Advisory, etc.
Scanning open-source components for malware not declared in databases
Uses Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) to map components to known vulnerabilities.
Regularly updated databases ensure new vulnerabilities are flagged, even for older dependencies.

4. OSS License Compliance

Identifies licensing terms for each dependency.
- Examples: GPL (restrictive, requires sharing modifications) vs. MIT (permissive).
Flags license conflicts or violations of internal organizational policies.

5. Vulnerability Remediation and Auto-Triaging

Provides actionable recommendations
- Suggests updates to patched versions (often automatically creating Pull Requests)
- Links to security advisories.
- Offers temporary workarounds.
Prioritizes vulnerabilities based on severity, exploitability, and runtime impact (auto-triaging).

6. Continuous Monitoring and Reporting

Periodically rescans the codebase for emerging vulnerabilities and updates SBOMs.
Maintains real-time visibility into OS components, their versions, and associated risks.

Top 10 Industry-proven SCA Tools

(In alphabetical order)

If you are looking for SCA tools and don’t know where to start, here is a list of 10 tools we consider to be industry leaders followed by there core features and any disadvantages.

Aikido Security

Aikido Security is a developer-focused no-nonsense security platform that combines 9 different scanners into a single platform protecting you from code to code.
Aikido takes a different approach to open-source dependency scanning by prioritizing vulnerabilities based on real-world risk factors instead of relying solely on CVSS scores and also scans for malware, license risks, and inactive packages.

Key Features:

Risk-Based Vulnerability Prioritization: Focuses on exploitable issues, considering data sensitivity and vulnerability reachability, reducing noise from irrelevant CVEs.
Advanced Malware Detection: Identifies hidden malicious scripts and data exfiltration attempts across major ecosystems like NPM, Python, Go, and Rust.
Reachability Analysis: Uses a robust engine to identify and prioritize actionable vulnerabilities, eliminating false positives and duplicates.
Automated Remediation Workflows: Integrates with tools like Slack, Jira, and GitHub Actions to automate ticketing, notifications, and security policies.
Local CLI Scanner: Enables secure, self-hosted scanning for teams handling sensitive data, ensuring compliance with privacy and regulatory standards.
Developer-Centric Design: Embeds security directly into workflows, offering clear, actionable guidance tailored to the specific impact on codebases.
Straightforward Pricing: Predictable and cost-effective, with savings of up to 50% compared to competitors.

Apiiro

Apiiro combines deep code analysis with runtime behavior monitoring to identify and prioritize exploitable vulnerabilities and open-source risks, providing comprehensive insights and streamlining remediation directly within developer workflows.

Key Features:

Comprehensive Risk Analysis: Evaluates open-source risks beyond CVEs, including unmaintained projects, licensing conflicts, and insecure coding practices.
Penetration Testing Simulations: Confirms the exploitability of vulnerabilities based on runtime context to prioritize critical risks.
Risk Graph and Control Plane: Maps OSS supply chains and automates workflows, policies, and remediation processes to address risks effectively.
Extended SBOMs (XBOM): Provides a real-time, graph-based view of dependencies and associated risks, including CI/CD and cloud resources.
Developer-Centric Remediation: Embeds contextualized alerts and secure version updates into existing developer workflows and tools.

Disadvantages:

High Cost: Requires a minimum annual contract of $35,400 for 50 seats, which may not be suitable for smaller organizations.
Complex Onboarding: Advanced features like risk graphing and XBOMs may necessitate a steep learning curve for new users.

Arnica

Arnica integrates directly with SCM systems to continuously monitor code changes and dependencies in real-time, providing early detection of vulnerabilities, dynamic inventory management, and actionable remediation guidance to ensure security is embedded into the development lifecycle.

Key Features:

Pipelineless SCA: Eliminates complex pipeline setups by natively integrating with tools like GitHub, GitLab, and Azure DevOps to scan every commit in real-time.
Dynamic Dependency Inventory: Maintains an up-to-date inventory of all external packages, licenses, and associated risks.
Exploitability Prioritization: Correlates OpenSSF scorecards and EPSS threat intelligence to calculate exploitability risk scores for each vulnerability.
Contextual Alerting: Delivers detailed, prescriptive alerts to relevant stakeholders with step-by-step remediation guidance, including one-click automated fixes.
Seamless Feedback Loop: Provides immediate security feedback to developers, fostering early and continuous vulnerability management.

Disadvantages:

Limited Free Features: Advanced functionalities require paid plans, starting at $8 per identity per month.
Scaling Costs: Costs increase with the number of identities, which may be a concern for large teams or organizations.

Cycode

Cycode provides end-to-end visibility into open-source vulnerabilities and license violations by scanning application code, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure, offering real-time monitoring, automated SBOM generation, and scalable remediation directly integrated into developer workflows.

Key Features:

Comprehensive Scanning: Analyzes application code, build files, and CI/CD pipelines for vulnerabilities and license violations.
Real-Time Monitoring: Uses a knowledge graph to identify deviations and potential attack vectors as they occur.
SBOM Management: Generates up-to-date SBOMs in SPDX or CycloneDX formats for all dependencies.
Integrated Remediation: Provides CVE context, suggested upgrades, one-click fixes, and automated pull requests to accelerate patching.
Scalable Fixes: This enables addressing vulnerabilities across repositories in a single action.

Disadvantages:

Pricing Transparency: Requires direct contact for pricing, with estimates suggesting $350 per monitored developer annually.
Cost for Larger Teams: Pricing may become prohibitive for organizations with many developers.

Deep Factor

DeepFactor combines static scanning with live runtime monitoring to generate comprehensive SBOMs, map dependencies, and identify exploitable risks by analyzing real-world execution patterns and runtime behaviors, offering a contextualized view of vulnerabilities to streamline remediation.

Key Features:

Runtime Reachability SCA: Tracks whether vulnerabilities are exploitable by analyzing executed code paths, control flows, and stack traces.
Dynamic SBOM Generation: Identifies all dependencies, including undeclared "phantom" components, by combining static and runtime analysis.
Customizable Security Policies: Allows organizations to define unique conditional rules and triggers based on their specific security needs.
Intelligent Alert Correlation: Consolidates related issues into actionable alerts with detailed context, reducing triage noise.
Granular Runtime Insights: Observes application behavior across file operations, memory usage, network activity, and more.

Disadvantages:

Pricing: Costs can add up quickly for larger teams, with the all-in-one plan at $65/developer/month.
Limited Language Support: Runtime reachability analysis currently supports a subset of languages (PHP, Kotlin, Go, Ruby, Scala), which may not cover all use cases.

Endor Labs

Endor Labs enhances SCA scanning by inspecting source code to build dynamic SBOMs, identify critical vulnerabilities, and detect insecure coding patterns, malware, and inactive dependencies, enabling DevSecOps teams to focus on the most exploitable risks with actionable insights and regulatory compliance support.

Key Features:

Granular Dependency Analysis: Maps all declared and "phantom" dependencies through source code inspection, not just manifest files.
Reachability Analysis: Identifies vulnerabilities realistically exploitable in the application’s context to reduce noise.
Endor Score: Provides a comprehensive health assessment of OSS packages, factoring in security history, community support, and maintenance.
Automated SBOM and VEX Reports: Continuously updates dependency inventories and vulnerability classifications with in-depth reachability context.
Advanced Detection Capabilities: Includes rules engines to flag malware, insecure patterns, dependency sprawl, and license violations.

Disadvantages:

High Entry Cost: Paid plans start at $10,000 annually, making it less accessible for smaller organizations.
Complexity for New Users: The comprehensive features and in-depth analysis may require onboarding time for new teams.

Oligo Security

Oligo adopts a unique approach to SCA by monitoring libraries at runtime, in both testing and production, to detect vulnerabilities that traditional scanners miss. Oligo offers actionable fixes based on application context and environment. By leveraging an extensive knowledge base of library behavior profiles and real-time monitoring, Oligo identifies zero-day vulnerabilities, improper library usage, and runtime-specific threats, ensuring DevSecOps teams address critical issues efficiently.

Key Features:

Runtime Monitoring: Tracks library behavior during testing and production to detect deviations and vulnerabilities.
eBPF-Based Profiling: Utilizes Linux kernel-level monitoring for unmatched visibility into runtime behavior.
Automated Policies and Triggers: Customizable security workflows and real-time alerts via tools like Slack and Jira.
Zero-Day Vulnerability Detection: Identifies threats before they are publicly known, preventing zero-day attacks.
Contextual Vulnerability Prioritization: Considers environment and library execution state to prioritize threats effectively.

Disadvantages:

Pricing Transparency: Requires a demo to access pricing details; no self-serve or standardized pricing information is available.
Platform Limitations: Primarily Linux-focused due to reliance on eBPF technology.

Semgrep

Semgrep is a comprehensive supply chain security platform that scans across the development workflow, leveraging lightweight pattern matching and reachability analysis to detect vulnerabilities and anti-patterns directly exploitable in your code, while offering customizable rules and real-time dependency visibility.

Key Features:

End-to-End Scanning: Monitors IDEs, repositories, CI/CD pipelines, and dependencies for security threats and anti-patterns.
Reachability Analysis: Identifies if flagged vulnerabilities are actively exploitable in your application, reducing unnecessary noise.
Dependency Search: Provides live, queryable streams of third-party packages and versions for real-time threat response and upgrade planning.
Semgrep Registry: Features over 40,000 pre-built and community-contributed rules, with options for custom rule creation.
Broad Language Support: Supports 25+ modern programming languages, including Go, Java, Python, JavaScript, and C#.
Seamless Integrations: Works out-of-the-box with GitHub, GitLab, and other popular version control systems.

Disadvantages:

Pricing for Larger Teams: Costs escalate quickly for mid-sized and large teams ($110/contributor/month for 10+ contributors).
Customization Complexity: Writing and managing custom rules may require additional effort for less experienced teams.

Snyk

Snyk has become the gold standard for traditional SCA tools, it creates detailed dependency trees, identifies nested dependencies, and creates prioritized remediation efforts based on real-world risk factors and exploitability. Snyk fits into the developer workflows with dashboard, CLI / IDE tools, provides actionable fixes, and helps ensure open-source license compliance.

Key Features:

Dependency Tree Mapping: Builds hierarchical graphs to detect vulnerabilities in direct and transitive dependencies and trace their impact.
Proprietary Priority Scoring: Ranks vulnerabilities based on exploitability, context, and potential impact, ensuring focus on critical threats.
Snyk Advisor: Assesses over 1 million open-source packages for security, quality, and maintenance to help developers choose the best dependencies.
Vulnerability Database: Maintains a robust database of 10+ million open-source vulnerabilities, manually vetted for accuracy and actionable insights.
Seamless Integration: Works with popular version control systems, CI/CD pipelines, and IDEs to scan code and dependencies in real time.
Customizable Policies: Allows organizations to enforce specific rules for vulnerability handling and license compliance.

Disadvantages:

Cost for Advanced Features: While the free plan is basic, advanced features for larger teams require higher-tier plans, which can be costly.
Manual Verification Dependency: Reliance on manual vetting for vulnerabilities may delay updates for newly discovered threats.

Socket Security

Socket leverages deep package inspection and runtime behavior analysis to proactively detect supply chain threats, zero-day vulnerabilities, and anomalies in open-source dependencies, ensuring comprehensive protection beyond traditional SBOM-based scanning.

Key Features:

Deep Package Inspection: Monitors dependencies' runtime behavior, including resource interactions and permission requests, to detect risky behaviors.
Proactive Threat Detection: Identifies zero-day vulnerabilities, typosquatting risks, and supply chain attacks before they’re publicly disclosed.
Pull Request Integration: Automatically scans dependencies with every pull request and provides actionable GitHub comments, ensuring early risk mitigation.
Dependency Overview: Offers insights into direct and transitive dependencies, providing a complete dependency graph with critical details and links.
Maintenance Risk Assessment: Evaluates maintainer activity, codebase updates, and social validation to flag potential risks in OSS packages.

Disadvantages:

Language Support: Limited to JavaScript, Python, and Go dependencies, which may restrict usage for teams working in other languages.

Choosing The Right OSS Dependency Scanner

Choosing the right SCA tool is going to depend on the specific needs of your project and the technology it uses. It is important to note that SCA is only one part of a comprehensive application security plan and using a stand-alone SCA tool will mean needing to integrate with multiple different vendors. All-in-one solutions like Aikido security are not just attractive in

Want to see Aikido in action? Sign up to scan your repos and get your first SCA results in less than 2 minutes.

Snyk vs Aikido Security | G2 Reviews Snyk Alternative

willem-delbare — Tue, 07 Jan 2025 07:30:40 +0000

So you’re in the market for application security, perhaps even a Snyk alternative. Whether it’s your first time exploring a code security platform or you’re a seasoned user searching for better options, you’re in the right place.

When developers and businesses evaluate their choices, two names often rise to the top: Aikido Security and Snyk. Both platforms offer comprehensive tools for engineering teams to secure their applications, but how do they really compare? Rather than relying on opinions, let’s turn to the voices that matter most: real users.

Based on verified 3rd-party reviews

This guide is a direct synopsis of verified third-party reviews from G2, the world’s largest trusted software marketplace. Over 100 million professionals rely on G2 annually to make informed software decisions using authentic user feedback. Based on the latest verified user data from G2, we’ll provide a detailed breakdown of Aikido Security vs. Snyk, analyzing features, user experience, pricing, and more.

In addition, you can also read these user reviews directly on G2. Here is the G2 link for Aikido Security and for Snyk, and the direct comparison reviews that compare Aikido as a Snyk alternative.

What is Aikido Security:

Led by serial CTO Willem Delbare, Aikdio is the “no bullshit” security platform for developers. After many years using other application security products, Delbare founded Aikido to fix security for CTOs and developers with an all-in-one platform code-to-cloud security platform designed to help engineering teams get security done. Engineering teams execute faster with Aikido thanks to developer-dedicated features: centralized scans, aggressive false positive reduction, dev-native UX, automatic risk triage, risk bundling, and easy step-by-step risk fixes, including LLM-powered autofixes for 3 different issue types.

TL;DR Aikido makes security simple for SMEs and doable for developers, so companies can win customers, grow up-market, and ace compliance.

What is Snyk:

Snyk is a well-known security company that positions itself as a “developer-oriented” security tool, for teams to identify and fix vulnerabilities in their code, open-source dependencies, and container images. Snyk is an early player in the “shift left” security movement and was founded 10 years ago in Tel Aviv and London and is currently headquartered in Boston, USA.

Aikido vs Snyk Alternative at a Glance

Aikido Security:
- Rating ⭐️: 4.7
- Market Segments: Small to Mid-Market Businesses
- Entry-Level Pricing: Free
Snyk:
- Rating ⭐️: 4.5
- Market Segments: Mid-Market to Enterprise
- Entry-Level Pricing: Free

Aikido Security is heavily favored by small to medium-sized businesses, while Snyk has broader adoption among larger mid-market organizations, especially enterprises. Both platforms offer free plans, making them accessible for individual developers and smaller teams.

Category Ranking Overview

User Experience

Ease of Use

Aikido Security: Rated 9.5, users praise its intuitive interface and streamlined workflows. It’s designed with a developer-first approach, ensuring minimal friction when integrating into existing CI/CD pipelines.
Snyk: Rated 8.7, while still user-friendly, some reviewers note a steeper learning curve, especially for teams unfamiliar with DevSecOps tools.

Ease of Setup

Aikido Security: With a score of 9.5, users love Aikido’s quick onboarding process and minimal configuration requirements.
Snyk: Rated 9.0, setup is straightforward, but users occasionally encounter challenges integrating with less common tools.

Ease of Administration

Aikido Security: Scoring 9.3, system administrators find it simple to manage teams, permissions, and integrations.
Snyk: Rated 8.8, administration is effective but can become complex in larger organizations.

Support and Product Direction

Quality of Support

Aikido Security: With an impressive score of 9.6, users frequently commend the responsive and knowledgeable support team. Most testimonials highlight fast support from Aikido team and founders as a top highlight.
Snyk: Rated 8.6, support is OK, generally reliable but sometimes slower for free-tier users.

Product Direction

Aikido Security: Users rank Aikido with a round 10.0 score, reflecting user confidence in its innovative roadmap and consistent feature updates.
Snyk: Rated 8.7, appreciated for its focus on open source and developer-centric tools but slightly lagging in comprehensive feature rollouts.

Aikido vs Snyk Alternative Feature Comparison

If you are looking for a Snyk alternative, it is important to note the specific production functionalities that each platform offers. While Snyk offers SAST, IaC, Software Composition Analysis, and vulnerability scanning, Aikido offers more functions and features within its all-in-one platform.

While Snyk offers 4 products, Aikido offers 11 products in one security suite, including SAST, DAST, Software Composition Analysis, IaC, container image scanning, secret scanning, malware scanning, API scanning, license risk scanning, local custom scanning, as well as cloud (CSPM) security.

Static Application Security Testing (SAST)

What is it? SAST is a method to identify vulnerabilities in source code before deployment.

Aikido Security: Rated 8.7, it excels in identifying vulnerabilities in source code and presenting actionable insights.
Snyk: Rated 7.7, effective but often criticized for generating more false positives compared to competitors.

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)

What is it? DAST is a technique that scans live applications to detect runtime vulnerabilities.

Aikido Security: Scoring 8.9, users appreciate its ability to identify runtime vulnerabilities with minimal configuration.
Snyk: Not enough data available to assess DAST capabilities.

Container Security

What is it? Container Security is the process of identifying vulnerabilities in containerized applications and images.

Aikido Security: Rated 8.4, it provides deep insights into container images and vulnerabilities across registries.
Snyk: Rated 7.9, strong for basic container scanning but less comprehensive in advanced scenarios.

Software Composition Analysis (SCA)

What is it? SCA is the practice of detecting vulnerabilities in open-source dependencies and third-party libraries.

Aikido Security: Scoring 8.9, it combines open-source dependency scanning with enhanced malware detection, ensuring robust protection.
Snyk: Rated 8.0, effective for detecting known vulnerabilities in open-source libraries but less advanced in identifying malicious packages.

Application Security Posture Management (ASPM)

What is it? ASPM is a framework for managing and improving the security posture of applications across their lifecycle.

Aikido Security: Scored 8.4, praised for its proactive approach to identifying and resolving security risks in application environments.
Snyk: Not enough data available to assess ASPM capabilities.

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM)

What is it? CSPM is a toolset for monitoring and securing cloud environments by identifying misconfigurations and compliance issues.

Monitors and secures cloud environments by identifying misconfigurations and compliance issues.
Aikido Security: Rated 7.4, integrates seamlessly into multi-cloud environments, providing clear misconfiguration insights. Aikido CSPM functionality was recently launched and a big facet of our roadmap.
Snyk: Not enough data is available to evaluate CSPM features. At this time, Snyk does not have CSPM functionality.

Vulnerability Scanner

What is it? A Vulnerability Scanner identifies and evaluates security vulnerabilities in systems and software.

Aikido Security: Rated 7.9, effective in pinpointing vulnerabilities with clear remediation guidance.
Snyk: Scored 8.1, valued for its extensive library of known vulnerabilities but criticized for frequent noise in results.

Verified Snyk vs Aikido customer testimonials:

Reviews from verified people that have used both Aikido and Snyk. If you want to hear how Aikido stacks up as a Snyk Alternative, read on below.

Aikido is an “effective and fair-priced solution”

Compared to well known competitors like Snyk, Aikido is much more affordable, more complete and most importantly much better at presenting the vulnerabilities that are actually reaching your systems. They use many popular open source libraries to scan your code, as well as propriatary ones, giving you a good mix

Aikido is “a cheaper Snyk Alternative”

We were looking for a cheaper alternative to Snyk and Aikido fills that role fantastically. Good software, easy UI and most important of all very easy to talk to with feedback.

Everything was really simple to set-up and onboarding of team members a breeze.

Hopefully, this synopsis of G2 user feedback helps to inform your search for an application security platform. If you are interested in testing Aikido, why not launch now?

Get your first scan results in 32 seconds with no credit card and no strings attached, you can even use demo data for extra security. If you want a more personalized walk-through, you can talk to a human or say “hi” on intercom. We respond in seconds 🤝

Webhook security checklist: How to build secure webhooks

willem-delbare — Thu, 04 Apr 2024 08:17:53 +0000

Why are you here?

Let’s not waste time. You’re here because you’re building a webhook feature in your app. Unfortunately, there are quite a few things that can go wrong from a security perspective. This article aims to ensure that you’re not making any well-known mistakes while building webhooks.

How do webhooks work?

As a quick recap, webhooks are HTTP(S) requests to third parties to inform them about something that happened in your app. For example, if you offer an application that generates invoices, you might offer your customers the opportunity to set up webhook functionality that is triggered when a new invoice is created. This means that when the invoice is created, your application will send a HTTP(S) request to a location that is determined by the user. The user can use this to set up their own custom workflows that are triggered by the webhook, such as scheduling reminder emails, or sending the customer a message on Slack.

Checklist: securing webhook implementations

1. Defeating SSRF-type attacks

In this type of attack, the attacker tries to get information (e.g. instance metadata in a cloud) by exploiting the webhook feature. To counter it, you should take the following measures.

✅ Validate user input

Basic: Perform simple URL validation.
Better: Ensure URL starts with "https://", disallow "file://" and other non-HTTPS schemes.

✅ Restrict Local Addresses

Block typical local IPs: 127.0.x, 192.168.x, 172.x.
Prohibit "localhost" and "http://"

✅ Limit Log Exposure

Show only HTTP status codes in user-facing logs.
Avoid displaying headers or body content.

✅ Advanced: Enhanced URL Validation

Require a specific response header for POST requests, unique to the customer.
Maintain this verification continuously, even after initial setup, to counter DNS changes..

2. Allow your users to verify data authenticity

Your webhook consumer must have a way to know the data really comes from your app. You can use any of the following methods.

✅ Test Message Verification

First, enable users to trigger a test message to test security mechanisms.

✅ HMAC Verification Hash

One of the most effective security mechanisms for webhooks functionalities is implementing HMAC for data integrity and authenticity.

The basic process can be summarized as follows:

Generate a hash of the payload using SHA-256 and a secret key.
Send the HMAC with the payload.
Recipients recreate the hash to verify payload authenticity and integrity.

✅ Timestamp Inclusion

This is more of an advanced security mitigation. Add a timestamp to the payload to prevent replay attacks. Ensures messages are not reused or altered.

✅ Client-Side TLS Certificates

Authenticate HTTP calls with client-side TLS certificates. This is particularly appealing for enterprise-level consumers.

3. Rate limit and avoid data overexposure

For webhook security, sending too little data is more secure than attaching too much. Although webhook callbacks should be encrypted using HTTPS, you can never know who might be in control of a domain name after a few years.

✅ Minimize Data Exposure

Avoid sending Personally Identifiable Information (PII) or sensitive data.
Instead of sending multiple data points (like contact_id, email, name), just send the contact_id. Let users fetch additional data through your public API if needed.

✅ Retry Policy Communication

Clearly communicate the retry policy and rate limits to users.
Inform them that due to retries, messages may arrive out of order.
Define that any 2xx response is a success; other responses should trigger a retry.

✅ Use a Queue System for Delivery

Implement a queue system to manage webhook delivery and throttle output. This approach helps prevent accidentally overwhelming your users' servers in edge cases, like a large CSV import triggering excessive webhook calls and retries.

4. Bonus: Anomaly alerting

This is more for developer convenience than security, but it's a good thing to implement nonetheless.

Alert users when 4xx and 5xx responses are encountered
Send notifications to inform users of any failures

This addition enhances transparency and responsiveness in your webhook system.

Conclusion

And there you have it! We've covered some steps to make your webhooks not just functional, but also secure and user-friendly. Implementing these steps will safeguard your app and also enhance the overall user experience. Happy coding! 🚀🔒👨‍💻

Aikido Security is a developer-centric software security platform. We help keep your product secure, so that you can focus on writing code. You don’t need to talk to a sales team - just connect your GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket or Azure DevOps account to start scanning your repos for free.

The Cure For Security Alert Fatigue Syndrome

willem-delbare — Fri, 23 Feb 2024 12:41:15 +0000

Most security tools waste developers’ time. We’re on a mission to fix this.

Application Developers aren't paid to care about security. Their performance is measured by the speed at which they can add value to the business through new features or enhancements.

This makes traditional security tools a hindrance as they're not built for developers — plus, they're not designed to be helpful. Their job is simply to show a massive list of security alerts, leaving it to the developer to figure out the rest.

npm audit provides no guidance or contextual risk assessment

At Aikido, our mission is to make securing applications as quick and painless as possible, and one of the most important ways we do this is by reducing the noise and false positives that waste developers' time and cause delays in shipping security fixes.

This post will show you what Aikido does to offer a cure for Developers suffering from Alert Fatigue Syndrome.

Reducing the Noise

In his famous song, "The Gambler," Kenny Rogers captured it pretty well:

“the secret to survivin', Is knowin' what to throw away and knowin’ what to keep.”

The most significant impact you can have on the signal-to-noise ratio is only showing developers the CVEs and security alerts they should take action on and ignoring the rest.

Here’s how Aikido intelligently ignores irrelevant security alerts and CVEs:

Development-Only Dependencies

By default, Aikido will not report vulnerabilities for dependencies marked only for installation in development environments, as they should not be present in staging or production environments.

Invalid CVEs or CVEs Without a Fix

Showing a CVE without a fix is just a distraction. Hence, Aikido temporarily moves these to a list of ignored issues until a fix becomes available before surfacing in the dashboard.

Example of invalid CVEs

Unreachable Code

Aikido's code intelligence and reachability engine will ignore a CVE if a vulnerable function is not called in the code base.

Example of Reachability Analysis

This decreases the noise, especially for large libraries with many dependencies, such as TensorFlow.

Expired or Revoked Secrets

Aikido will ignore secrets that have been verified as expired or revoked, or appear to be variables. Aikido safely verifies the validity of known secret types by sending a request to an API endpoint requiring authorization that doesn't produce sensitive data.

Example of an expired secret that has been downgraded & ignored

Manual Ignore Rules

You can configure Aikido to ignore vulnerabilities under certain conditions, e.g. ignore reporting for specific paths in a repository.

Example of how you can set manual ignore rules

Deduplication

Because most companies piece together their security infrastructure from several different sources, it's common for multiple systems to surface the same alert or CVE — plus, it’s common for traditional tools to surface the same CVE multiple times within a single repository. Talk about noise!

Because Aikido is an all-in-one platform offering you a single pane of glass across all security issues, you'll only see a single CVE alert for each repository with sub-issues listing the location of each vulnerability.

Example of how Aikido groups CVEs for you

Boosting the Signal with Contextual Sensitivity Tuning

A security issue discovered in a repository handling sensitive data should be scored differently from an internal-only repository that doesn’t persist data at all.

Example of how you can configure the sensitivity of data managed in a repo

Aikido provides various contextual indicators for every repository, helping uncover more security risks and appropriately weighting an issue's final severity score.

For example, by adding a domain name, Aikido can perform targeted scans for issues such as SSL vulnerabilities, cookie misconfigurations, if a CSP has been applied, and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

Additional contextual examples include whether the application has internet access and which environments the application is deployed in.

Boosting the Signal for Exploitation Risk

Aikido uses real-time indicators to track the probability of a CVE being exploited in the wild, such as confirmed cases of exploitation, public code documenting how to perform the exploit, and any customer-specific cloud infrastructure concerns which may make them particularly vulnerable.

And because Aikido monitors both your code and cloud infrastructure, it can boost the severity of "toxic combination" issues arising from specific conditions under which your application is hosted, e.g. AWS instances using IMDS API version 1 are more vulnerable to SSRF exploits which can expose AWS Credentials.

Summary

Traditional security tools don't care about developer productivity. They're more than happy to bury a repository in a pile of false positives, wasting developers time that could've been better spent actually resolving security issues.

What makes Aikido different, is that we see the link between developer productivity and security. By removing irrelevant alerts and CVEs, genuine threats get more attention, and as a result, fixes get applied faster.

This win-win for developers and security is what we're all about and is how we're curing Security Alert Fatigue Syndrome for our customers.

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Top 3 web application security vulnerabilities in 2024

willem-delbare — Thu, 28 Sep 2023 15:22:27 +0000

We've isolated the top 3 critical web application security vulnerabilities that Aikido users face. This guide outlines what they are, why they're so common, and how to fix them - along with some risky runner-ups we couldn't ignore.

Address these early and effectively, and you'll already be well ahead in the fight to keep your web application secure against cybercrime.

Watch out for these top web application security vulnerabilities to keep your code and cloud secure

1. Most common and critical code vulnerability (SAST)

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is a testing method that scans source code for vulnerabilities early in the development cycle. It's called a white-box method because the workings of the application are known to the tester.

NoSQL injection attacks (code vulnerability: SAST)

NoSQL injection can lead to leaked data, corrupted databases, and even complete system compromise. Sadly, it's a critical web application security vulnerability and we've seen a lot of Aikido user accounts exposed to it.

What is NoSQL injection?

NoSQL injection is a type of attack where hackers use malicious code to manipulate or gain unauthorized access to a NoSQL database. Unlike SQL injections, which target SQL databases, NoSQL injections exploit vulnerabilities in NoSQL databases like MongoDB. It can lead to data leaks, corruption, or even full control over the database.

Example of basic NoSQL injection vulnerable code

Why is this vulnerability so common?

NoSQL injection is common partly because of the increasing popularity of NoSQL databases, especially MongoDB. These databases offer performance benefits, but they come with unique security challenges.

On top of this, NoSQL databases are flexible in that they accept various formats like XML and JSON. This flexibility is great, but it can lead to web application security vulnerabilities, as standard security checks might not catch malicious inputs tailored to these formats.

And the vast array of NoSQL databases, each with its own syntax and structure, also makes it harder to create universal safeguards. Security professionals must understand the specific details of each database and that adds complexity to the prevention process.

Even worse, and unlike traditional SQL injections, NoSQL injections can occur in different parts of an application. This makes them even harder to detect.

How can you easily fix this vulnerability?

Use input validation and parameterized queries. Input validation ensures user inputs match expected types and formats, rejecting unsafe values. Parameterized queries prevent the embedding of unvalidated inputs.

In general, always implement database security features like authentication and encryption. Stay updated with the latest patches. And make sure you conduct regular audits of code and configurations to identify and fix this and other vulnerabilities.

Runner-up: Leaving dangerous debug functions in code (code vulnerability: SAST)

Exposed debug functions allow reconnaissance that assists attackers in exploiting systems - sometimes with significant security risk.

What are dangerous debug functions?

Debug functions like phpinfo() can expose sensitive information about your server and environment. This includes the PHP version, OS details, server information, and even environment variables that might contain secret keys (although we definitely don't recommend putting secret keys there in the first place!).

As a result, detecting the structure of your filesystem through these debug functions might allow hackers to carry out directory traversal attacks if your site is vulnerable. Exposing phpinfo() on its own isn't necessarily a high risk, but it can make it slightly easier for attackers. The principle is clear: the less specific info hackers have about your system, the better.

Why is this vulnerability so common?

This web application security vulnerability often occurs because developers use these functions for debugging and sometimes even push them to production for troubleshooting. Rushed releases, lack of code review, and underestimating risks all contribute to these functions being left exposed.

How can you easily fix this vulnerability?

Code review: regularly check your code to identify and remove debug functions before deploying to production.
Automated vulnerability scanning tools: use a tool, like Aikido, that can detect dangerous debug functions.
Environment-specific configurations: make sure you disable debug functions in the production environment.

2. Most common and critical DAST vulnerability

Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST) is a testing technique that identifies vulnerabilities in running applications. It's called a black-box method because it focuses only on observable behavior. DAST shows you what the system might look like to an attacker.

Use HSTS to prevent vulnerabilities like HTTP issues

Forgetting major security headers: HSTS and CSP (cloud vulnerability: DAST)

A lack of proper HSTS and CSP implementation leaves web applications vulnerable to major attacks like XSS and information disclosure.

What is CSP?

Content Security Policy (CSP) is a security mechanism that helps defeat various browser-based attacks like cross-site scripting and clickjacking. It does this by restricting risky behaviors in web pages such as inline JavaScript and unsafe eval() functions. CSP enforces safer defaults to maintain the integrity and confidentiality of content. The key benefit is protecting against malicious injection of scripts.

Why is this DAST vulnerability so common?

It’s very common to neglect HSTS and CSP, especially CSP and developers often prioritize functionality over these headers.

You should plan CSP early in development, but it often gets overlooked. And when devs try to implement or retrofit it later it causes conflicts, so they skip CSP entirely to get on with other work. This leaves apps unprotected and subject to a range of web application security vulnerabilities.

How can you easily fix this DAST vulnerability?

Implement HSTS to force HTTPS only connections. Enable on the server through configuration files or a WAF.
Define and apply a strict CSP tailored to your app by restricting unsafe practices like inline scripts. Carefully test for compatibility.
Continuously monitor and update headers as the app evolves to maintain protection.

3. Most common and critical cloud vulnerability (CSPM)

Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tools continuously monitor cloud-based environments to ensure compliance with security standards and best practices. CSPM tools look for security misconfigurations and are aimed at mitigating risks.

Use CSPM tools to keep your cloud environment safe from security misconfigurations

Leaving EC2 IAM roles vulnerable to SSRF attacks (cloud: CSPM)

Open EC2 IAM roles frequently can enable attackers to move laterally and gain unauthorized access across cloud environments. The potential impact of this kind of attack can be devastating.

What are EC2 IAM roles?

EC2 IAM (Identity and Access Management) roles in Amazon Web Services (AWS) delegate permissions to determine allowed actions on specific resources. They enable EC2 instances to securely interact with other AWS services without having to store credentials directly on the instances themselves.

What is an SSRF attack?

A Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) attack is where an attacker forces the server to make requests to internal resources as if it's the server itself asking. The attacker can potentially access unauthorized systems this way, bypass controls, or even execute commands. Check out this terrifying example of how an SSRF attack took over a startup’s cloud via a simple form to send an email.

Why is this CSPM vulnerability so common?

EC2 IAM roles are usually left vulnerable to SSRF attacks because of security misconfigurations or overly permissive roles. Juggling complex cloud permissions is hard and some developers might not fully understand the risks. On top of this, wanting services to work smoothly together can often nudge teams to grant more access than is really needed.

How can you easily fix this CSPM vulnerability?

There are some solid ways to tackle EC2 roles and mitigate SSRF web application security vulnerabilities. First off, stick to the principle of least privilege - only allow the exact access that's absolutely needed and nothing more. Overly permissive roles are asking for trouble.

Next up, make use of built-in AWS tools like security groups and network ACLs to lock down traffic and reduce the potential openings for SSRF attacks. The more you can limit access, the better.

It's also important to regularly review and audit roles to catch any unnecessary access that might be creeping in over time as things change. Stay on top of it.

And lastly, implement AWS security tools focused specifically on detecting and preventing SSRF attacks before they cause harm. The more layers of protection, the more secure you'll be.

Runner-up: Outdated cloud lambda runtimes (cloud: CSPM)

When these runtime environments become outdated, they may expose the lambda functions to attackers.

What are outdated lambda runtimes?

Outdated lambda runtimes refer to using older versions of programming languages or environments in serverless functions (lambdas). These outdated runtimes may lack the latest security patches or feature updates, potentially exposing applications to known web application security vulnerabilities.

Why is this CSPM vulnerability so common?

The vulnerability often arises from a “set and forget” mentality. Developers may deploy lambdas with a specific runtime and neglect to update them as new versions are released. They can also make the mistake of assuming that cloud providers handle all maintenance. Even though AWS and Google Cloud Functions will maintain runtimes for you with minor OS patches, they won’t do major language upgrades. On top of all that, the complexity of managing multiple lambdas makes it easy for outdated runtimes to fall through the cracks and create extra risk.

How can you easily fix this CSPM vulnerability?

You can mitigate the risk by following three simple rules:

Regularly review which runtimes are used and check for updates.
Upgrade to the latest supported versions with security patches.
Use automation tools to manage and update runtimes where possible.

Web application security vulnerabilities and best practices

Understanding these web application security vulnerabilities is essential for system security, but remember to follow best security practices. Stay up to date, apply the appropriate fixes, and maintain regular monitoring to keep your environment safe and secure.

Scan your environment with Aikido right now to find out if you're exposed to any of these vulnerabilities.

Check out Aikido’s 2024 SaaS CTO Security Checklist to get concise advice on 40+ ways to improve security across your people, processes, code, infrastructure, and more.

What is OWASP Top 10?

willem-delbare — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 14:07:39 +0000

In the rapidly shifting digital landscape, application security is a necessity. One of the most effective ways to bolster your application’s security is by evaluating it with the OWASP Top 10. But what exactly is the OWASP Top 10, and why should it matter to you?

OWASP Top 10: a framework for web security

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a nonprofit foundation that strives to make software on the web more secure. Their Top 10 is a widely recognized report that outlines the 10 most critical web application security risks. It’s essentially a checklist of the most common weaknesses that could make your application a target for cyber threats.

Why should you care about the OWASP Top 10?

The OWASP Top 10 is all about risk management. Addressing the vulnerabilities highlighted in the OWASP Top 10 helps you mitigate the risk of a security breach, develop safer code, and create a more secure application.

Following the OWASP Top 10 is also a smart move to adhere to regulatory standards and give users faith in your commitment to security best practices. If your application handles sensitive data, your users want to know that it is safe.

The OWASP checklist is updated about every three or four years and the last update was in 2021. Some consolidation, renaming, and rearranging occur each time, as vulnerabilities and threats rise and fall in severity. Being aware of current dangers can help you to know where to start and what critical risks need immediate attention.

Let’s take a look at the most recent checklist.

OWASP Top 10 Web Application Security Risks

1. Broken Access Control

Restrictions on what authenticated users are allowed to do are often not enforced. Hackers can exploit these flaws to access unauthorized functionality and/or data. They might be able to access other user accounts, view sensitive files, modify or destroy data, and change access rights. They could even end up with admin rights to the entire system. The OWASP Top 10 stresses one essential rule here: except for public resources, deny by default.

2. Cryptographic Failures

Many web applications don’t properly protect sensitive data, such as credit cards, authentication credentials, health records, and other personal data. Attackers can steal or modify weakly protected data to conduct credit card fraud, identity theft, or other crimes. For businesses, intellectual property and other business secrets need to be kept safe. Make sure to evaluate the protection needs of data in transit and at rest. And regularly assess all protocols and algorithms for weaknesses.

3. Injection

Injection flaws occur when an application sends untrusted data as part of a command or query. Attackers can trick the interpreter into executing unintended commands or accessing unauthorized data, leading to data loss, corruption, or unauthorized access. Source code review will help you here, as will rigorous use of application security testing tools before deploying to production.

4. Insecure Design

OWASP firmly recommends that security needs to start before any coding takes place. Design or architectural flaws can doom an application even if it is securely implemented. This pre-coding phase needs to include more threat modeling, secure design patterns and principles, and reference architectures. It has to involve the balancing of business and technical requirements, alongside a cold, hard look at business risk profiling.

5. Security Misconfiguration

Misconfiguration risk refers to improper implementation of controls to keep application data safe, such as errors in security settings, software updates, server configuration files, or application features and pages. You can go a long way towards mitigating these risks by keeping a tight ship in the form of a minimal platform. Don’t include unnecessary features, frameworks, and components. The bottom line, according to the OWASP Top 10, is to disable default accounts and passwords, make sure that error handling doesn't reveal too much info, and keep everything patched and updated.

6. Vulnerable and Outdated Components

Components, such as libraries, frameworks, and other software modules, run with the same privileges as the application. If a vulnerable component is exploited, an attack can mean serious data loss or even a complete server takeover. You need to know the versions you’re using both on the client and server side, scan for vulnerabilities regularly, and keep track of security bulletins. But most importantly, OWASP says, don’t just patch every month or quarter, as this leaves your application exposed and at risk.

7. Identification and Authentication Failures

If your application’s authentication and session management functions are not implemented correctly, attackers can compromise passwords, keys, or session tokens, or exploit other implementation flaws to assume other identities. The OWASP Top 10 warns against weak passwords, reusing session identifiers, weak recovery processes, or permitting automated attacks. If you can, multi-factor authentication is the way to go here, along with a range of straightforward, common-sense authentication measures.

8. Software and Data Integrity Failures

Software and data integrity failures can happen when applications depend on untrusted sources, like plugins or libraries. Also, having insecure CI/CD pipelines can lead to unauthorized access or even system compromise. Another risk comes from auto-update features that don’t do enough to verify integrity and insecure ways of organizing data structures. To prevent these risks, your team should use digital signatures. These can confirm the safety of software or data. Make sure to only use trusted repositories for libraries and dependencies. You should also implement software supply chain security tools to check for known vulnerabilities. OWASP suggests maintaining a review process for code and configuration changes and setting up proper access control for the CI/CD pipeline. Finally, don’t send unsigned or unencrypted serialized data to clients unless you’ve checked it for integrity or added a digital signature.

9. Security Logging and Monitoring Failures

Insufficient logging and monitoring, combined with missing or ineffective integration with incident response, allows attackers to attack systems, maintain persistence, pivot to more systems, and tamper with, extract, or destroy data. Among other measures, the OWASP Top 10 suggests that you should log all events like logins and failed logins, warnings, and errors should generate clear log messages, and logs should never only be stored locally. Making logging and alerting events visible to a user is also a source of risk.

10. Server-Side Request Forgery

Server Side Request Forgery (SSRF) issues occur when a web app fetches data from a remote source without checking the user-given URL. This can let attackers trick an app into making requests to unwanted places, even past network security measures. OWASP believes that these issues are becoming more common as modern web apps often need to fetch URLs. The risks are becoming more serious because of the use of cloud services and complex systems. Again, the deny-by-default approach at the network access level is your friend here. And there are a range of application layer measures to take as well.

I’ve written a blog about a real-life use case, feel free to check it out.

Why use OWASP Top 10?

The OWASP Top 10 is not just a list of problems—it’s a guide to solutions. Each item on the checklist includes a section on how to prevent the vulnerability and example attack scenarios that provide developers with practical steps to improve their application's security. Securing your application is an ongoing process and new threats emerge all the time. By staying vigilant and making security a priority, you can keep your application secure and your users safe.

And for companies, the OWASP Top 10 isn’t just a checklist—it's a conversation starter. It’s a tool that brings security to the forefront of the development process, fostering a culture of security awareness within your organization. By focusing on the OWASP Top 10, you’re not just enhancing your application’s security, you’re making security a core part of your development process.

Aikido automatically scans your environment and gives you your OWASP Top 10 score

If you’re a cloud-native company, Aikido now makes it easy for you to scan your development environment for OWASP Top 10 coverage. Our testing tools and security reports give you a clear OWASP Top 10 score and an analysis of the measures taken to prevent each vulnerability. You can share the reports with stakeholders and use them to get a quick snapshot of what security practices you need to focus on.

Scan your environment with Aikido right now to get your OWASP Top 10 score.

How to build a secure admin panel for your SaaS app

willem-delbare — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 09:46:45 +0000

How can you avoid common mistakes when building a SaaS admin panel? We’ll outline some pitfalls and potential solutions specifically for all you SaaS builders out there!

What happens when you’re building a SaaS app that has more than a few customers? At some point, the inevitable happens! Your sales and customer success people come to the development team with requirements like:

Show me which accounts are actively used
Allow me to enter a customer account for technical support
Enable or disable a specific feature flag for some account
Some users cannot log in, can you tell me what method they use to authenticate?
I have a reseller and they need access to their subaccounts
I need to extend a free trial for an account
An account needs a specific config that only customer success agents should be able to set up
Show me the total MRR for a specific group of customers.

A variety of tools can cover some of these use cases. PLG tools like Segment and journy.io can track activity. Maybe you use a feature flag service such as LaunchDarkly. Stripe or Chargebee might manage some of the billing-related aspects. Meanwhile, problems related to authentication might be visible in your Auth0 account. However, it’s unlikely that you’re using all these platforms. Even if you are, you probably can’t cover some use cases.

The solution is building a custom admin panel. There seem to be some frameworks and commercial services available to start quickly. But, how do you go about picking one vs building your own from scratch?

Avoid admin panels built into your app

As a first principle, we’d advocate avoiding any admin panel injected into your main app’s code, as ActiveAdmin does. This has many disadvantages:

New admin API routes can likely be detected in your app’s client code and attackers can probe or attack this vulnerability
You’ll likely end up with multiple types of users inside of one codebase, complicating access control reviews
Adding extra protection features, such as restricting access from a single IP address, will be a lot harder
If there’s a critical issue detected in the admin panel code, it’s harder to take it offline without taking your app offline.

Apps that do not follow this principle have a higher chance of ending up in Slashdot stories. Here’s one: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/23/01/09/221207/researchers-track-gps-location-of-all-of-californias-new-digital-license-plates. Notably, this story demonstrates that it’s possible to upgrade a user account to a super admin account that can view data from other users.

Pick an admin panel with a user action audit log

In case it has to be said, that means your admins will need to authenticate with separate user accounts. (No logging in with a shared password using support@app.io !). What’s the advantage of this? If any sensitive account settings are updated, you can find out later who made the change.

Enforce at least 2FA (or 3FA) to authenticate admin users

Choose an admin panel solution that allows you to add extra factors on top of 2FA such as IP restrictions or access via other zero-trust solutions.

Bonus: Use Content Security Policy (CSP) headers to block unknown javascript

Blocking unknown javascript is critical, especially on internal admin portals. Below, an example of how Apple was vulnerable to email injection vulnerability, which could’ve been solved with simple CSP headers.

https://twitter.com/samwcyo/status/1738991457627717913

Concluding thoughts on building a secure admin panel

Yes, it’s possible to build a safe admin panel for your app. You’ll have to pick either a framework to help you or an existing SaaS or low-code solution to help you get started. As long as you keep it separate from your main app and have it communicate with your main app over private APIs, you should be good to go.

Aikido is an all-in-one application security tool. Want to see if your app is secure? Start scanning for free.