docs(security): add VEX file with vulnerabilities information to SBOM

[dfucci]

Dear project owners,
We are a group of researchers investigating the usefulness of augmenting Software Bills of Materials (SBOMs) with information about known vulnerabilities of third-party dependencies.

As claimed in previous interview-based studies, a major limitation—according to software practitioners—of existing SBOMs is the lack of information about known vulnerabilities. For this reason, we would like to investigate how augmented SBOMs are received in open-source projects.

To this aim, we have identified popular open-source repositories on GitHub that provided SBOMs, statically detected vulnerabilities on their dependencies in the OSV database, and, based on its output, we have augmented your repository’s SBOM by leveraging the OpenVEX implementation of the Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX).

The JSON file in this pull request consists of statements each indicating i) the software products (i.e., dependencies) that may be affected by a vulnerability. These are linked to the SBOM components through the @id field in their Persistent uniform resource locator (pURL); ii) a CVE affecting the product; iii) an impact status defined by VEX. By default, all statements have status under_investigation as it is not yet known whether these product versions are actually affected by the vulnerability. After investigating the vulnerability, further statuses can be affected, not_affected, fixed. It is possible to motivate the new status in a justification field (see https://www.cisa.gov/sites/default/files/publications/VEX_Status_Justification_Jun22.pdf for more information).

We open this pull request containing a VEX file related to the SBOM of your project, and hope it will be considered.
We would also like to hear your opinion on the usefulness (or not) of this information by answering a 3-minute anonymous survey:
https://ww2.unipark.de/uc/sbom/

Thanks in advance, and regards,
Davide Fucci (Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden)
Simone Romano and Giuseppe Scaniello (University of Salerno, Italy),
Massimiliano Di Penta (University of Sannio, Italy)

I submit this contribution under the Apache-2.0 license.

[anterosilva1985]

Hi @dfucci ,
At Checkmarx, we have a dedicated engine (SCA) specific to solve/check these dependencies. Therefore we wont invest on this area in KICS.

Thank you for the input.

Regards,
Antero Silva

[dfucci]

@anterosilva1985 thank you for checking our PR.
Please note that the use case for VEX is to document the lifecycle of third-party dependency vulnerabilities rather than solve or check them. In other words, it is a companion for an SBOM (usually produced through SCA).

That said, it would be helpful if you could fill out the survey, in case you have not. This way, we can make progress in understanding how to better manage vulnerabilities of 3rd party dependencies in OSS projects.