GitHub Action for Vulnerability Scanning

⚡ Find threats in files or containers at lightning speed ⚡

This is a GitHub Action for invoking the Grype scanner and returning the vulnerabilities found, and optionally fail if a vulnerability is found with a configurable severity level.

Use this in your workflows to quickly verify files or containers' content after a build and before pushing, allowing PRs, or deploying updates.

The action invokes the grype command-line tool, with these benefits:

• Runs locally, without sending data outbound - no credentials required!
• Speedy scan operations
• Scans both paths and container images
• Easy failure evaluation depending on vulnerability severity

The example workflows have lots of usage examples for scanning both containers and directories.

By default, a scan will produce very detailed output on system packages like an RPM or DEB, but also language-based packages. These are some of the supported packages and libraries:

Supported Linux Distributions:

• Alpine
• BusyBox
• CentOS and RedHat
• Debian and Debian-based distros like Ubuntu

Supported packages and libraries:

• Ruby Bundles
• Python Wheel, Egg, requirements.txt
• JavaScript NPM/Yarn
• Java JAR/EAR/WAR, Jenkins plugins JPI/HPI
• Go modules

Container scanning

The simplest workflow for scanning a localbuild/testimage container:

- name: Set up Docker Buildx
  uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v2

- name: build local container
  uses: docker/build-push-action@v4
  with:
    tags: localbuild/testimage:latest
    push: false
    load: true

- name: Scan image
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v6
  with:
    image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"

Directory scanning

To scan a directory, add the following step:

- name: Scan current project
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v6
  with:
    path: "."

The path key allows any valid path for the current project. The root of the path ("." in this example) is the repository root.

Scanning an SBOM file

Use the sbom key to scan an SBOM file:

- name: Create SBOM
  uses: anchore/sbom-action@v0
  with:
    format: spdx-json
    output-file: "${{ github.event.repository.name }}-sbom.spdx.json"

- name: Scan SBOM
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v6
  with:
    sbom: "${{ github.event.repository.name }}-sbom.spdx.json"

Failing a build on vulnerability severity

By default, if any vulnerability at medium or higher is seen, the build fails. To have the build step fail in cases where there are vulnerabilities with a severity level different than the default, set the severity-cutoff field to one of low, high, or critical:

With a different severity level:

- name: Scan image
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v6
  with:
    image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
    fail-build: true
    severity-cutoff: critical

Optionally, change the fail-build field to false to avoid failing the build regardless of severity:

- name: Scan image
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v6
  with:
    image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
    fail-build: false

Action Inputs

The inputs image, path, and sbom are mutually exclusive to specify the source to scan; all the other keys are optional. These are all the available keys to configure this action, along with the defaults:

Input Name	Description	Default Value
image	The image to scan	N/A
path	The file path to scan	N/A
sbom	The SBOM to scan	N/A
registry-username	The registry username to use when authenticating to an external registry
registry-password	The registry password to use when authenticating to an external registry
fail-build	Fail the build if a vulnerability is found with a higher severity. That severity defaults to medium and can be set with severity-cutoff.	true
output-format	Set the output parameter after successful action execution. Valid choices are json, sarif, cyclonedx-xml, cyclonedx-json, and table; where table output will also display in the logs.	sarif
output-file	File to output the Grype scan results to. Defaults to a file in the system temp directory, available in the action outputs
severity-cutoff	Optionally specify the minimum vulnerability severity to trigger a failure. Valid choices are "negligible", "low", "medium", "high" and "critical". Any vulnerability with a severity less than this value will lead to a "warning" result. Default is "medium".	medium
only-fixed	Specify whether to only report vulnerabilities that have a fix available.	false
add-cpes-if-none	Specify whether to autogenerate missing CPEs.	false
by-cve	Specify whether to orient results by CVE rather than GHSA.	false
vex	Specify a list of VEX documents to consider when producing scanning results.	false
cache-db	Cache the Grype DB in GitHub action cache and restore before checking for updates	false
grype-version	An optional Grype version to download, defaults to the pinned version in GrypeVersion.js.

Action Outputs

Output Name	Description	Type
sarif	Path to the SARIF report file, if output-format is sarif	string
json	Path to the report file , if output-format is json	string
cyclonedx-xml	Path to the CycloneDX report file, if output-format is cyclonedx	string
cyclonedx-json	Path to the CycloneDX JSON report file, if output-format is cyclonedx-json	string

Example Workflows

Assuming your repository has a Dockerfile in the root directory:

name: Container Image CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@b4ffde65f46336ab88eb53be808477a3936bae11 # v4.1.1
      - name: Build the container image
        run: docker build . --file Dockerfile --tag localbuild/testimage:latest
      - uses: anchore/scan-action@v6
        with:
          image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
          fail-build: true

Same example as above, but with SARIF output format - as is the default, the action will generate a SARIF report, which can be uploaded and then displayed as a Code Scanning Report in the GitHub UI.

💡 Code Scanning is a Github service that is currently in Beta. Follow the instructions on how to enable this service for your project.

name: Container Image CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    # Permissions key is required for CodeQL SARIF Upload, per the docs:
    # https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/code-scanning/integrating-with-code-scanning/uploading-a-sarif-file-to-github
    permissions:
      security-events: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@b4ffde65f46336ab88eb53be808477a3936bae11 # v4.1.1
      - name: Build the Container image
        run: docker build . --file Dockerfile --tag localbuild/testimage:latest
      - uses: anchore/scan-action@v6
        id: scan
        with:
          image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
      - name: upload Anchore scan SARIF report
        uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        with:
          sarif_file: ${{ steps.scan.outputs.sarif }}

Optionally, you can add a step to inspect the SARIF report produced:

- name: Inspect action SARIF report
  run: cat ${{ steps.scan.outputs.sarif }}

Additional configuration

You may add a .grype.yaml file at your repository root for more Grype configuration such as ignoring certain matches.

anchore/scan-action/download-grype

A sub-action to download Grype and optionally cache the Grype DB.

Input parameters:

Parameter	Description	Default
grype-version	An optional Grype version to download, defaults to the pinned version in GrypeVersion.js.
cache-db	Cache the Grype DB in GitHub action cache and restore before checking for updates	false

Output parameters:

Parameter	Description
cmd	a reference to the Grype binary.

cmd can be referenced in a workflow like other output parameters: ${{ steps.<step-id>.outputs.cmd }}

Example usage:

- uses: anchore/scan-action/download-grype@v3
  id: grype
- run: ${{steps.grype.outputs.cmd}} dir:.

Contributing

We love contributions, feedback, and bug reports. For issues with the invocation of this action, file issues in this repository.

For contributing, see Contributing.

More Information

For documentation on Grype itself, including other output capabilities, see the grype project

Connect with the community directly on Discourse.

Diagnostics

This action makes extensive use of GitHub Action debug logging, which can be enabled as described here by setting a secret in your repository of ACTIONS_STEP_DEBUG to true.