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Add CodeQL Workflow for Code Security Analysis #1645

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merged 4 commits into from
Oct 26, 2023
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b4yuan
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@b4yuan b4yuan commented Oct 20, 2023

Summary

This pull request introduces a CodeQL workflow to enhance the security analysis of this repository.

What is CodeQL

CodeQL is a static analysis tool that helps identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities. It is primarily intra-function but does provide some support for inter-function analysis. By integrating CodeQL into a GitHub Actions workflow, it can proactively identify and address potential issues before they become security threats.

For more information on CodeQL and how to interpret its results, refer to the GitHub documentation and the CodeQL documentation (https://codeql.github.com/ and https://codeql.github.com/docs/).

What this PR does

We added a new CodeQL workflow file (.github/workflows/codeql.yml) that

  • Runs on every pull request (functionality to run on every push to main branches is included as a comment for convenience).
  • Runs daily.
  • Excludes queries with a high false positive rate or low-severity findings.
  • Does not display results for git submodules, focusing only on our own codebase.

Validation

To validate the functionality of this workflow, we have run several test scans on the codebase and reviewed the results. The workflow successfully compiles the project, identifies issues, and provides actionable insights while reducing noise by excluding certain queries and third-party code.

Using the workflow results

If this pull request is merged, the CodeQL workflow will be automatically run on every push to the main branch and on every pull request to the main branch. To view the results of these code scans, follow these steps:

  1. Under the repository name, click on the Security tab.
  2. In the left sidebar, click Code scanning alerts.

Is this a good idea?

We are researchers at Purdue University in the USA. We are studying the potential benefits and costs of using CodeQL on open-source repositories of embedded software.

We wrote up a report of our findings so far. The TL;DR is “CodeQL outperforms the other freely-available static analysis tools, with fairly low false positive rates and lots of real defects”. You can read about the report here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.00205

Review of engineering hazards

License: see the license at https://github.com/github/codeql-cli-binaries/blob/main/LICENSE.md:

Here's what you may also do with the Software, but only with an Open Source Codebase and subject to the License Restrictions provisions below:

Perform analysis on the Open Source Codebase.

If the Open Source Codebase is hosted and maintained on GitHub.com, generate CodeQL databases for or during automated analysis, CI, or CD.

False positives: We find that around 20% of errors are false positives, but that these FPs are polarized and only a few rules contribute to most FPs. We find that the top rules contributing to FPs are: cpp/uninitialized-local, cpp/missing-check-scanf, cpp/suspicious-pointer-scaling, cpp/unbounded-write, cpp/constant-comparison, and cpp/inconsistent-null-check. Adding a filter to filter out certain rules that contribute to a high FP rate can be done simply in the workflow file.

Add CodeQL Workflow for Code Security Analysis

This pull request introduces a CodeQL workflow to enhance the security analysis of our repository. CodeQL is a powerful static analysis tool that helps identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities in our codebase. By integrating this workflow into our GitHub Actions, we can proactively identify and address potential issues before they become security threats.

We added a new CodeQL workflow file (.github/workflows/codeql.yml) that
- Runs on every push and pull request to the main branch.
- Excludes queries with a high false positive rate or low-severity findings.
- Does not display results for third-party code, focusing only on our own codebase.

Testing:
To validate the functionality of this workflow, we have run several test scans on the codebase and reviewed the results. The workflow successfully compiles the project, identifies issues, and provides actionable insights while reducing noise by excluding certain queries and third-party code.

Deployment:
Once this pull request is merged, the CodeQL workflow will be active and automatically run on every push and pull request to the main branch. To view the results of these code scans, please follow these steps:
1. Under the repository name, click on the Security tab.
2. In the left sidebar, click Code scanning alerts.

Additional Information:
- You can further customize the workflow to adapt to your specific needs by modifying the workflow file.
- For more information on CodeQL and how to interpret its results, refer to the GitHub documentation and the CodeQL documentation.

Signed-off-by: Brian <bayuan@purdue.edu>
Add CodeQL Workflow for Code Security Analysis

This pull request introduces a CodeQL workflow to enhance the security analysis of our repository. CodeQL is a powerful static analysis tool that helps identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities in our codebase. By integrating this workflow into our GitHub Actions, we can proactively identify and address potential issues before they become security threats.

We added a new CodeQL workflow file (.github/workflows/codeql.yml) that
- Runs on every pull request (functionality to run on every push to main branches is included as a comment for convenience).
- Runs daily.
- Excludes queries with a high false positive rate or low-severity findings.
- Does not display results for git submodules, focusing only on our own codebase.

Testing:
To validate the functionality of this workflow, we have run several test scans on the codebase and reviewed the results. The workflow successfully compiles the project, identifies issues, and provides actionable insights while reducing noise by excluding certain queries and third-party code.

Deployment:
Once this pull request is merged, the CodeQL workflow will be active and automatically run on every push and pull request to the main branch. To view the results of these code scans, please follow these steps:
1. Under the repository name, click on the Security tab.
2. In the left sidebar, click Code scanning alerts.

Additional Information:
- You can further customize the workflow to adapt to your specific needs by modifying the workflow file.
- For more information on CodeQL and how to interpret its results, refer to the GitHub documentation and the CodeQL documentation (https://codeql.github.com/ and https://codeql.github.com/docs/).

Signed-off-by: Brian <bayuan@purdue.edu>
Add CodeQL Workflow for Code Security Analysis

This pull request introduces a CodeQL workflow to enhance the security analysis of our repository. CodeQL is a powerful static analysis tool that helps identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities in our codebase. By integrating this workflow into our GitHub Actions, we can proactively identify and address potential issues before they become security threats.

We added a new CodeQL workflow file (.github/workflows/codeql.yml) that
- Runs on every pull request (functionality to run on every push to main branches is included as a comment for convenience).
- Runs daily.
- Excludes queries with a high false positive rate or low-severity findings.
- Does not display results for git submodules, focusing only on our own codebase.

Testing:
To validate the functionality of this workflow, we have run several test scans on the codebase and reviewed the results. The workflow successfully compiles the project, identifies issues, and provides actionable insights while reducing noise by excluding certain queries and third-party code.

Deployment:
Once this pull request is merged, the CodeQL workflow will be active and automatically run on every push and pull request to the main branch. To view the results of these code scans, please follow these steps:
1. Under the repository name, click on the Security tab.
2. In the left sidebar, click Code scanning alerts.

Additional Information:
- You can further customize the workflow to adapt to your specific needs by modifying the workflow file.
- For more information on CodeQL and how to interpret its results, refer to the GitHub documentation and the CodeQL documentation (https://codeql.github.com/ and https://codeql.github.com/docs/).

Signed-off-by: Brian <bayuan@purdue.edu>
Add CodeQL Workflow for Code Security Analysis

This pull request introduces a CodeQL workflow to enhance the security analysis of our repository. CodeQL is a powerful static analysis tool that helps identify and mitigate security vulnerabilities in our codebase. By integrating this workflow into our GitHub Actions, we can proactively identify and address potential issues before they become security threats.

We added a new CodeQL workflow file (.github/workflows/codeql.yml) that
- Runs on every pull request (functionality to run on every push to main branches is included as a comment for convenience).
- Runs daily.
- Excludes queries with a high false positive rate or low-severity findings.
- Does not display results for git submodules, focusing only on our own codebase.

Testing:
To validate the functionality of this workflow, we have run several test scans on the codebase and reviewed the results. The workflow successfully compiles the project, identifies issues, and provides actionable insights while reducing noise by excluding certain queries and third-party code.

Deployment:
Once this pull request is merged, the CodeQL workflow will be active and automatically run on every push and pull request to the main branch. To view the results of these code scans, please follow these steps:
1. Under the repository name, click on the Security tab.
2. In the left sidebar, click Code scanning alerts.

Additional Information:
- You can further customize the workflow to adapt to your specific needs by modifying the workflow file.
- For more information on CodeQL and how to interpret its results, refer to the GitHub documentation and the CodeQL documentation (https://codeql.github.com/ and https://codeql.github.com/docs/).

Signed-off-by: Brian <bayuan@purdue.edu>
@github-advanced-security
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This pull request sets up GitHub code scanning for this repository. Once the scans have completed and the checks have passed, the analysis results for this pull request branch will appear on this overview. Once you merge this pull request, the 'Security' tab will show more code scanning analysis results (for example, for the default branch). Depending on your configuration and choice of analysis tool, future pull requests will be annotated with code scanning analysis results. For more information about GitHub code scanning, check out the documentation.

@sjanc
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sjanc commented Oct 25, 2023

Hi,

thanks for setting this up! I've got some questions though, does CodeQL support non-autotools build systems and cross-compilation?

@b4yuan
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b4yuan commented Oct 25, 2023

The answer should be yes for the most part, it is a matter of configuration

@sjanc sjanc merged commit aa62739 into apache:master Oct 26, 2023
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2 participants