Automatic feedback of scan results as PR comment

[harmw]

I'm looking at ways go improve engagement (around security) and one way is to involve my devs a little more in everything security.

Currently the results of a scan (can) go to the GitHub security dashboard, which is fine, but how about a sub action to create a little markdown comment inside the PR?

Simply this:

anchore/scan-action/pr-comment@0

This would look for a sarif file, extract the required bits and post a comment in the PR thread. There's a markdown field inside this file which we may want to use, or write out a different message altogether.

Thoughts?

[kzantow]

@harmw sorry I missed this earlier. This is a great idea! I think this could probably be a part of the main action, though, instead of a sub-action, just with an option; would that work too?

[harmw]

yeah totally, just figured having it separate would make it easier to develop (separation of concerns, decoupling) 🙂 (but my JS skills are sub-par)

[kzantow]

The distinction between a sub-action and the main one to me is where you would generally use it in a workflow. For PR comments, you'd use it when the action runs and wouldn't need a separate action. I really do like this idea and was hoping to do something similar for the sbom-action, I guess I'll have to read up on how to accomplish this in the GitHub API!

[harmw]

just as an FYI, here's something (completely unrelated) that I'm using inside some actions:

const ok_output = `#### Linter: \`${{ steps.linter.outcome }}\``;
const fail_output = `
\`\`\`
${process.env.RESULTS}
\`\`\`
`;
let output = ok_output;

if ("${{ steps.linter.outcome }}" != "success") {
  output += fail_output;
};

github.rest.issues.createComment({
  issue_number: context.issue.number,
  owner: context.repo.owner,
  repo: context.repo.repo,
  body: output
})

[guizmaii]

Any news? I'm very interested in this feature :)

[tgerla]

Hi @guizmaii, we don't have this on our short term roadmap right now but maybe the solution above from @harmw would be sufficient? If not, we would definitely be happy to look at a pull request for this as a built in feature. Thanks!

[mortenhauberg]

Hi,

This was exactly what I was looking for. But apparently, I'm too dumb to make the suggestion by @harmw work 🤦🏻‍♂️

I have a feeling that there's something obvious I'm missing. How do I capture the table output?

I've tried something like this, and I do get the output, but as a single line

# I have other steps to generate the SBOM and download Grype and it works as expected
 - name: Scan SBOM
    id: scan
    run: echo table=$(${{ steps.grype.outputs.cmd }} -o table --fail-on medium sbom:sbom.spdx.json) >> $GITHUB_OUTPUT

My Google-foo is failing me. Can someone educate me 😅?

[harmw]

this is how we're doing the scan-sbom-and-write-a-comment:

    - name: Scan SBOM
      id: scanner
      uses: anchore/scan-action@v3
      continue-on-error: true
      with:
        fail-build: true
        severity-cutoff: critical
        sbom: "${{ github.event.repository.name }}_sbom.spdx.json"

    - run: mv ${{ steps.scanner.outputs.sarif }} ${{ github.event.repository.name }}.sarif

    - name: Update PR with vulnerability scan results
      uses: actions/github-script@v6
      if: github.event_name == 'pull_request'
      with:
        script: |
          let fs = require('fs')
          let sarif_file = '${{ github.event.repository.name }}.sarif'
          let sarif

          try {
            sarif = JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(sarif_file, 'utf8'));
          } catch(e) {
            console.log(e)
          }

          let output = `:microscope: vulnerability scan result: **failure in parsing report**`

          if (typeof(sarif) == 'object') {
            const issues = sarif.runs[0].results.length > 0 ? sarif.runs[0].results.length : 0
            output = `:microscope: vulnerability scan result: \`${issues}\` issue(s) found `

            if (issues > 0) {
              let table = '\n'
              table += '<details><summary>View details...</summary>\n'
              table += '\n'
              table += '| Severity | Description | Resolution |\n'
              table += '|----------|-------------|------------|\n'

              let criticals = 0
              let highs = 0
              for (run of sarif.runs) {
                  for (rule of run.tool.driver.rules) {
                      let description = rule.shortDescription.text
                      let resolution = rule.fullDescription.text
                      let severity = rule.properties['security-severity']
                      table += `| ${severity} | ${description} | ${resolution} |\n`
                      if (description.toLowerCase().indexOf('critical vulnerability') > -1) {
                        criticals++
                      }
                      if (description.toLowerCase().indexOf('high vulnerability') > -1) {
                        highs++
                      }
                  }
              }
              output += highs > 0 ? ':warning:' : ''

              if (criticals > 0) {
                output += `\n:pause_button: **one or more vulnerabilities found with label _critical_, pausing build. Please [resolve](https://insert.url.here/how-to-guides/code-scanning) these to continue.** :rotating_light:`
              }

              output += table
              output += '</details>\n\n'

              output += `<sub>:bulb: _please check the [developers hub](https://insert.url.here/) on how to work with the \`grype\` vulnerability scanner_</sub>`

              github.rest.issues.createComment({
                issue_number: context.issue.number,
                owner: context.repo.owner,
                repo: context.repo.repo,
                body: output
              })
            }
          }

I now know there are better options out there, but this got us moving in the right direction 😅

[mortenhauberg]

Perfect - thanks! I thought there would be a way to capture the table output. This will do the trick.

Thanks a lot

[MPV]

Another idea, annotations:

• https://github.com/anchore/scan-action/issues/244

[MPV]

Or opening issues, as done by many actions for Trivy:

• https://github.com/marketplace?category=&type=actions&verification=&query=trivy+issue

[kkovaletp]

This is how I've implemented the comment functionality for PRs: (workflow, example of the comment)

Key features:

• HTML table
• returns only dependencies, which have new fixed versions available (configurable in the "Scan PR source code" step)
• contains only the important info (list of fields is configurable in the "Prepare JSON" step)
• the comment is created \ updated \ deleted based on the existence of the results after the latest scan (which means there is no spam of comments after each new commit, as well as users always see the latest scan results if there are still fixable issues)