Enable OpenSSF Scorecard to enhance security practices across the project

[harshitasao]

Hi, I'm Harshita. I’m working with CNCF and the Google Open Source Security Team for the GSoC 2024 term. We are collaborating to enhance security practices across various CNCF projects. The goal is to improve security for all CNCF projects by both using OpenSSF Scorecards and implementing its security improvements.

The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Scorecard is a tool designed to evaluate the security posture of open-source projects. This has the Scorecard GitHub Action, which automates the process by running security checks on the GitHub repository. By integrating this Action into the repository's workflow, developers can continuously monitor the project’s security posture. The Scorecard checks cover various security best practices and provide scores for multiple categories. Some checks include Code Reviews, Branch Protection, Signed Releases, etc.

The workflow runs on every change in the main branch. It publishes the Scorecard checks' results to the project's security dashboard and includes suggestions on how to solve any issues. This Action has already been adopted by 1800+ projects, with prominent users like Tensorflow, Angular, sos.dev, deps.dev, and many CNCF projects.

Once the Scorecard GitHub Action is set up and running, the results can be displayed as a badge in the repository's README file. This badge serves as a quick indicator of the project's security posture, helping users and contributors evaluate the project's security practices quickly.

Why is this needed:

The OpenSSF Scorecard improves open-source project's security by providing automated, transparent assessments of their security practices. It will help you identify vulnerabilities, adhere to best practices, and continuously enhance your security posture, increasing user trust and reducing the risk of security exploits.

I'll be the one to create the PR to add the scorecard GitHub action, and I will also work with you to remediate the identified vulnerabilities. I'll go through each scorecard check to see where the score has dropped and how it can be improved.

Would you be interested in a PR which adds this Action?

/cc @joycebrum @diogoteles08 @pnacht @nate-double-u

[scholzj]

Hi @harshitasao ... Does it need to be integrated into the actual CI pipeline doing the project build? Or can it run separately? We run most of our CI stuff on Azure Pipelines. So the integration there might not be trivial. But if it can run as a separate GitHub Action without any integration into the build process, it should be easy to do and might be worth trying as it sounds useful.

[ppatierno]

AFAIU it's something which can be integrated in the github workflows where we already have CodeQL analysis for example, so it should not have an impact on the Azure pipeline. I am for it, let's see if useful information comes.

[harshitasao]

Hi, the scorecard can run as a separate GitHub Action without any integration into the build process.

[scholzj]

Oki, great, thanks. In that case, as @ppatierno said, I think we are definitely happy to try it and use it.