SAST scan

Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is an automated security analysis methodology that examines application code to identify potential security vulnerabilities.

SAST has the following characteristics:

  • White-box Testing: Provides full visibility into application internals
  • Non-runtime Analysis: Performs scans without code execution
  • Early Detection: Identifies vulnerabilities during development phases
  • Language Support: Analyzes multiple programming languages and frameworks

Endor Labs integrates Opengrep to provide SAST scan with endorctl.

Opengrep is an open-source, static analysis tool that finds bugs and vulnerabilities in the source code using pattern matching. Opengrep parses the source code, applies pattern matching based on rules, and reports matches based on the rule specifications. Opengrep rules are in the yaml format.

When you run a SAST scan, Endor Labs downloads Opengrep and works seamlessly.

Endor Labs includes a set of curated rules. You can create your own rules or import rules with the rule designer.

Note
Ensure that the default finding policy Report SAST results matching given criteria is enabled so that SAST scans generate findings.

When you scan with the SAST option enabled, Endor Labs uses Opengrep to scan for weaknesses in your source code based on the enabled rules and generates results based on the configured finding policies.

Tip
Endor Labs does not scan the files included in the .gitignore files during SAST scan. You can also use the nosemgrep annotation in the code to skip SAST scan. Refer to the Semgrep Documentation for more information.

SAST scan results are available in the Findings page. See View SAST Findings for more information.

You can create exception policies to exclude results from the findings page. See Create exception policy for more information.

You can create a finding policy using predefined templates to control which SAST results appear as findings. See SAST policies for more information.

Endor Labs determines the severity of findings by combining two factors from the SAST rule: impact and confidence. Impact measures the potential consequences if a security issue were to be exploited. Confidence represents how certain the system is that a detected pattern indicates a genuine security issue rather than a false positive.

The following matrix shows how Endor Labs resolves severity by combining impact and confidence.

High Impact Medium High Critical
Medium Impact Low Medium High
Low Impact Low Low Medium
Low Confidence Medium Confidence High Confidence

Endor Labs supports single-function analysis for the following languages through curated rules and custom user rules:

Apex Bash C Cairo Circom Clojure C++ C# Dart Dockerfile Elixir Generic Go Hack HTML Java JavaScript JSON Jsonnet Julia Kotlin Lisp Lua Move OCaml PHP PromQL Protobuf Python QL R Regex Ruby Rust Scala Scheme Solidity Swift Terraform TypeScript XML YAML

Ensure that you complete the following prerequisites before you proceed to do a SAST scan using endorctl.

Install endorctl and configure your environment to run Endor Labs scan.

You can run a SAST scan with endorctl with the following command.

endorctl scan --sast -n <project namespace>

See Run a SAST scan for more information on the command options.

You can enable SAST scans when you configure monitoring or supervisory scans using the Endor Labs GitHub App, Azure DevOps App, Bitbucket App, and GitLab App. See Monitoring scans for more information. To disable the storage of code snippet in SAST scans for monitoring scans, you need to create a scan profile for your monitoring scan with disable code snippet storage as enabled. This setting applies to all scans that you use this scan profile, not just the monitoring scans.

You can also enable SAST scan in the Endor Labs GitHub Action. Set the scanning parameter, scan_sast as true. To disable code snippet storage for SAST scans, set disable_code_snippet_storage as true. See Scan with GitHub Actions for more information.

You can use the --pr-incremental flag to perform an incremental scan on your pull requests or merge requests for SAST. In monitoring scans, incremental scans are done by default for PR scans. Endor Labs only scans the files that have changed since the last scan on the baseline branch. Endor Labs computes a diff between the target branch and the baseline branch to identify the changed files. Any modified file is sent through Opengrep to fully scan for SAST issues, and unchanged files are skipped. Endor Labs does not perform chunk-level or line-level code diff analysis for SAST. If there are more than 1000 modified files, Endor Labs performs a complete scan.