Vulnerability severity levels
GitLab vulnerability analyzers attempt to return vulnerability severity level values whenever possible. The following is a list of available GitLab vulnerability severity levels, ranked from most to least severe:
CriticalHighMediumLowInfoUnknown
Most GitLab vulnerability analyzers are wrappers around popular open source scanning tools. Each open source scanning tool provides their own native vulnerability severity level value. These values can be one of the following:
| Native vulnerability severity level type | Examples |
|---|---|
| String |
WARNING, ERROR, Critical, Negligible
|
| Integer |
1, 2, 5
|
| CVSS v2.0 Rating | (AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:N) |
| CVSS v3.1 Qualitative Severity Rating | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H |
To provide consistent vulnerability severity level values, the GitLab vulnerability analyzers convert from the above values to a standardized GitLab vulnerability severity level, as outlined in the following tables:
SAST
| GitLab analyzer | Outputs severity levels? | Native severity level type | Native severity level example |
|---|---|---|---|
security-code-scan | Yes | String |
CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM in analyzer version 3.2.0 and later. In earlier versions, hardcoded to Unknown. |
brakeman | Yes | String |
HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW
|
sobelow | Yes | Not applicable | Hardcodes all severity levels to Unknown
|
nodejs-scan | Yes | String |
INFO, WARNING, ERROR
|
flawfinder | Yes | Integer |
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
|
SpotBugs | Yes | Integer |
1, 2, 3, 11, 12, 18
|
phpcs-security-audit | Yes | String |
ERROR, WARNING
|
pmd-apex | Yes | Integer |
1, 2, 3, 4, 5
|
kubesec | Yes | String |
CriticalSeverity, InfoSeverity
|
secrets | Yes | Not applicable | Hardcodes all severity levels to Critical
|
semgrep | Yes | String |
error, warning, note, none
|
kics | Yes | String |
error, warning, note, none (gets mapped to info in analyzer version 3.7.0 and later) |
Dependency Scanning
| GitLab analyzer | Outputs severity levels? | Native severity level type | Native severity level example |
|---|---|---|---|
gemnasium | Yes | CVSS v2.0 Rating and CVSS v3.1 Qualitative Severity Rating 1 |
(AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:P/I:P/A:N), CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
|
The CVSS v3.1 rating is used to calculate the severity level. If it’s not available, the CVSS v2.0 rating is used instead.
Container Scanning
| GitLab analyzer | Outputs severity levels? | Native severity level type | Native severity level example |
|---|---|---|---|
container-scanning | Yes | String |
Unknown, Low, Medium, High, Critical
|
When available, the vendor severity level takes precedence and is used by the analyzer. If that is not available then it falls back on the CVSS v3.1 rating. If that is also not available, then the CVSS v2.0 rating is used instead. Details on this implementation are available on the respective issues for trivy and grype.
Fuzz Testing
All fuzz testing results are reported as Unknown. They should be reviewed and triaged manually to find exploitable faults to prioritize for fixing.