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Security report ingestion overview

Definitions

  • Vulnerability Finding – an instance of Vulnerabilities::Finding class. This class was previously called Vulnerabilities::Occurrence; after renaming the class, we kept the associated table name vulnerability_occurrences due to the effort involved in renaming large tables.
  • Vulnerability – an instance of Vulnerability class. They are created based on information available in Vulnerabilities::Finding class. Every Vulnerability must have a corresponding Vulnerabilities::Finding object to be valid, however this is not enforced at the database level.
  • Security Finding – an instance of Security::Finding class. They store partial finding data to improve performance of the pipeline security report. We are working on extending this class to store almost all required information so we can stop relying on job artifacts.
  • Feedback – an instance of Vulnerabilities::Feedback class. They are created to keep track of users' interactions with Vulnerability Findings before they are promoted to a Vulnerability. We are in the process of removing this model via Deprecate and remove Vulnerabilities::Feedback epic.
  • Issue Link – an instance of Vulnerabilities::IssueLink class. They are used to link Vulnerability objects to Issue objects.

Vulnerability creation from security reports

Assumptions:

  • Project uses GitLab CI
  • Project uses security scanning tools
  • No Vulnerabilities are present in the database
  • All pipelines perform security scans
  1. Code is pushed to a branch that's not the default branch.
  2. GitLab CI runs a new pipeline for that branch.
  3. Pipeline status transitions to any of ::Ci::Pipeline.completed_statuses.
  4. Security::StoreScansWorker is called and it schedules Security::StoreScansService.
  5. Security::StoreScansService calls Security::StoreGroupedScansService.
  6. Security::StoreGroupedScansService calls Security::StoreScanService.
  7. Security::StoreScanService calls Security::StoreFindingsService.
  8. At this point we have Security::Finding objects only.

At this point, the following things can happen to the Security::Finding:

  • Dismissal
  • Issue creation
  • Promotion to a Vulnerability

If the pipeline ran on the default branch then the following, additional steps are done:

  1. Security::StoreScansService gets called and schedules Security::StoreSecurityReportsWorker.
  2. Security::StoreSecurityReportsWorker executes Security::Ingestion::IngestReportsService.
  3. Security::Ingestion::IngestReportsService takes all reports from a given Pipeline and calls Security::Ingestion::IngestReportService and then calls Security::Ingestion::MarkAsResolvedService.
  4. Security::Ingestion::IngestReportService calls Security::Ingestion::IngestReportSliceService which executes a number of tasks for a report slice.

Dismissal

If you select Dismiss vulnerability, a Feedback is created. You can also dismiss it with a comment.

After Feedback removal

If there is only a Security Finding, a Vulnerability Finding and a Vulnerability get created. At the same time we create a Vulnerabilities::StateTransition record to indicate the Vulnerability was dismissed.

Issue creation

If you select Create issue, a Vulnerabilities::Feedback record is created as well. The Feedback has a different feedback_type and an issue_id that’s not NULL.

NOTE: Vulnerabilities::Feedback are in the process of being deprecated. This will later create a Vulnerabilities::IssueLink record.

After Feedback removal

If there's only a Security Finding, a Vulnerability Finding and a Vulnerability gets created. At the same time, we create an Issue and a Issue Link.

Promotion to a Vulnerability

If the branch with a Security Finding gets merged into the default branch, all Security Findings get promoted into Vulnerabilities. Promotion is the process of creating Vulnerability Findings and Vulnerability records from those Security Findings.

If there's a dismissal Feedback present for that Security Finding, the created Vulnerability is marked as dismissed.

If there's an issue Feedback present for that Security Finding, we also create an Issue Link for that Vulnerability.