Alright, I need to vent and see if I'm the only one dealing with this. I've been neck-deep in setting up a comprehensive SAST/SCA pipeline for a mid-sized team (around 25 devs) using a mix of Go, JavaScript, and Python. We're on GitLab Ultimate, self-hosted, and I've integrated both Semgrep and Trivy for scanning.
The issue that's driving me up the wall: we are getting absolutely *hammered* by alerts for `LICENSE`, `LICENSE.md`, `COPYING`, and other license-related files **inside `node_modules` and `vendor` directories**. It's creating so much noise that real vulnerabilities are getting buried.
Our config looks something like this for Trivy in `.gitlab-ci.yml`:
```yaml
trivy-scan:
stage: test
image: aquasec/trivy:latest
variables:
TRIVY_TIMEOUT: "10m"
script:
- trivy filesystem --severity HIGH,CRITICAL --format sarif --output gl-sast-report.sarif .
artifacts:
reports:
sast: gl-sast-report.sarif
```
And for Semgrep, we're using the Security tab's built-in integration. Both are flagging these license files for "Potential license finding" or "Generic file detected" with high severity sometimes, just because they contain GPL or other license text.
**Context:**
* **Team Size:** 25 engineers
* **Stack:** Go backend, React frontend, some Python tooling.
* **Self-hosted:** Yes, GitLab runners and the app itself are on our own k8s cluster. We considered SaaS options but compliance said no.
**My questions for the community:**
* Are you just ignoring these alerts? That feels wrong from a compliance/audit perspective.
* Have you found a reliable way to exclude these paths *globally* across all SAST/SCA tools without having to configure each one individually? I'm trying to build a "set it and forget it" pipeline template.
* Is this a sign our tools are misconfigured, or is this just the state of the art in 2024? We pay a lot for Ultimate, and I expect more sophistication than alerting on `node_modules/**/LICENSE`.
I've tried adding patterns like `**/node_modules/**`, `**/vendor/**` to the exclusion lists, but sometimes the tools still peek inside. It's a constant game of whack-a-mole.
What's your strategy? Do you:
* Suck it up and triage them all?
* Have a magical regex?
* Use a pre-scan step to clean up these directories?
* Just turn off file-based scanning entirely (which seems dangerous)?
I'm leaning towards writing a pre-script that deletes all `LICENSE*` and `COPYING*` files from dependencies before the scanners run, but that feels... hacky. There must be a better way.
pipeline all the things
Oh man, I feel this even from my marketing automation world. We're not running SAST but our security team rolled out a similar scanning process for our code repositories that host our custom HubSpot modules and integrations. The noise from vendor files is unreal, and it totally drowns out the one or two legit things we actually need to fix.
Have you tried adding a `.trivyignore` policy file at your project root? You can tell it to skip paths and specific vulnerability IDs. Something like:
- skip-paths: node_modules/, vendor/
- vulnerabilities: [list the IDs for those generic license findings]
It's a band-aid, but it might cut the noise while you figure out a better permanent rule set in GitLab itself. The built-in Security tab can be super rigid.
If it's not measurable, it's not marketing.
The .trivyignore band-aid works, but it's a global suppress. You'll miss any actual license issue in your own source. The real problem is the scanners not respecting .gitignore by default.
You need to exclude patterns at the scanner config level, not the results level. For Trivy, that's `--skip-dirs node_modules,vendor` in the scan command. Stops the scan entirely on those paths. Your CI runner won't waste cycles on them.
Beep boop. Show me the data.
Yeah, that `--skip-dirs` flag makes so much sense. It stops the scan at the source instead of filtering the output later. I'm still learning my way around these tools - is that a common pattern for other scanners too, like Semgrep? I'd hate to set this up in Trivy and then have to find a totally different method for another tool in the same pipeline.
Yeah, the built-in GitLab integration is the worst for this. It runs with default rules, and those defaults are terrible for real projects. You're getting nailed by the "Generic File Detection" ruleset, which treats any license file with certain keywords as a potential legal risk.
You can't just fix it in the pipeline YAML because GitLab runs its own internal scan. You have to override the analyzer variables globally in your project or group CI/CD settings. Look for variables like `SECURE_ANALYZERS_PREFIX` and `SAST_EXCLUDED_PATHS`. You need to set `SAST_EXCLUDED_PATHS: vendor,node_modules,*/.git`.
Even then, the license rule might still fire if it's in your main code. You'll need to create a custom `.gitlab-semgrep.yml` to disable that specific rule pattern. It's a pain, but it's the only way to shut it up without turning off scanning entirely.