Rezilion has updated its open source MI-X vulnerability discovery tool to include mitigation and remediation recommendations.
In addition, the tool can now produce machine-readable output in either a JSON or CSV format.
Finally, the company added Windows support for Heartbleed and SpookySSL vulnerabilities in Windows environments.
MI-X makes it possible to use a command line interface (CLI) tool to identify and establish the exploitability of more than 20 well-known common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs).
Yotam Perkal, director of vulnerability research for Rezilion, said Rezilion created the tool as part of its efforts to create a platform that enables organizations to better secure their software supply chains. The primary purpose of the platform is to prevent vulnerabilities from being introduced into applications in the first place by providing developers with the context required to understand the potential severity of a vulnerability, he added.
There’s no doubt that developers need tools that enable them to easily identify vulnerabilities while writing code. However, shifting responsibility for vulnerabilities entirely left toward developers is not a panacea for application security. DevOps teams need to embrace DevSecOps best practices to ensure that the build created by multiple developers is secure and that the runtime environment where applications run is also free of malware.
The challenge is that achieving that goal needs to go beyond adding additional tools to a DevOps workflow. The biggest challenge is narrowing the historic cultural divide between developers and cybersecurity teams tasked with discovering vulnerabilities. Most cybersecurity professionals don’t understand how applications are developed, so every instance of vulnerability found in an application looks the same to them—regardless of whether the actual code is externally accessible.
DevOps teams, meanwhile, are trying to strike a delicate balance between patching innumerable vulnerabilities and building and deploying additional applications. More than anything, those teams need to be able to prioritize their patching efforts based on the actual versus theoretical severity of a vulnerability, noted Perkal.
It may never be possible to address all the application security debt application environments have accrued over the years. However, as apps are built and application security issues are addressed more proactively, the state of cybersecurity should improve. The issue, of course, is that cybercriminals are now targeting software supply chains; inserting malware into a DevOps workflow creates a potential opportunity to compromise any number of downstream applications. Organizations are now racing against time to secure their software supply chains.
The good news is that no developer intentionally sets out to build an insecure application. It’s just that far too many of them have been conditioned to think of security as an obstacle they need to overcome rather than address. However, the more tools they are provided to remediate as many vulnerabilities as possible, the better off everyone concerned will be.
