We rely on open source libraries when we write code because it saves a lot of time (modern applications rely on hundreds of them), but these dependencies can also introduce vulnerabilities that are tricky to manage and easy to exploit by attackers.
One way of addressing this challenge is to check the open source packages you use for known vulnerabilities.
In this blog I would like to discuss how to do this using an open source tool called Snyk.
The first thing you want to do after creating an account is to integrate Snyk with your development environment. It supports a fair amount of systems, but here I would like to talk about GitHub as an example. The process of getting the rest of the integrations are pretty similar.
Snyk’s browser version has an intuitive interface and all you need to do is go to the Integrations tab, select GitHub and follow the instructions.
After granting the necessary permissions and selecting the code repositories you want tested (don’t forget the private ones too), they will be immediately scanned.
You will be able to see the results in the Projects tab with issues conveniently ordered by severity so you can easily prioritise what to tackle first. You can also see the dependency tree there which can be quite handy.
A detailed description of the vulnerability and some recommendations on how to remediate it are also provided.
Most vulnerabilities can be fixed through either an upgrade or a patch and that’s what you should really do, or ask someone (perhaps by creating a ticket) if you don’t own the codebase. Make sure you test it first though as you don’t want the update to break your application.
Some fancy reporting (and checking license compliance) is only available in the paid plan but the basic version does a decent job too.
You can set up periodic tests with desired frequency (daily or weekly) which technically counts as continuous monitoring but it’s only the second best option compared to performing tests in your deployment pipeline. Integrating Snyk in your CI/CD workflow allows to prevent issues in your code before it even gets deployed. This is especially useful in organisations where code gets deployed multiple times a day with new (potentially vulnerable) libraries being introduced. And that’s something we are going to discuss in my next blog.
Cyber Security Leadership 
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