Breaking Free from Vulnerability Scanning Noise: Automated VEX Aggregation for Accuracy
Teppei Fukuda, Aqua Security Software Ltd.
Abstract
Vulnerability scanners detect known vulnerabilities in software dependencies, but often produce inaccurate results (false-positives) due to their inability to automatically determine if a vulnerability is actually exploitable. Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange (VEX) is an industry-wide initiative that aims to address this issue, but the lack of standardized distribution hinders its effective utilization. This talk introduces VEX Hub, a central repository that automatically aggregates VEX documents published by open-source projects. VEX Hub’s unique architecture makes it easy and practical for software maintainers to start adopting VEX, while at the same time making it seamless for scanners and users to incorporate VEX in their workflow. The presentation showcases a practical use case of VEX Hub with Trivy, an open-source security scanner that popularizes VEX thanks to VEX Hub and delivers more accurate and actionable scanning results to its users.
