Scan release notes

Made a significant number of improvements across languages to reduce false positives.

Improved parsing of Natural source code to reduce false positives and improve scan performance.

Improved parsing of COBOL source code to reduce false positives and improve scan performance.

Updated the supported version of Kotlin to 1.6.0.

Added support for scanning of Java 16 and 17 files.

Improved support for Vue.JS.

Fixed a bug that caused the source code scan engine to fail for all scans.

The --memory option now works with the binary scan engine.

Recommendation: Keep your memory allocation for the binary scan engine at 12GB or higher. A lower memory allocation can adversely affect the binary scan engine's performance and accuracy.

To reduce noise and potential false positives, .h files are no longer implicitly scanned for C, C++, or ObjectiveC languages.

If, during the course of scanning these languages, the source code calls a .h file, then that file is scanned as part of the overall code analysis.

MD5 checksum: fa99a209ba3662a198df735fa4c795eb

SHA1 checksum: 1c78f9570e20c18b01c4b609904f4bdf9cfe8eff

SHA256 checksum: e4316485cba75bf032cfcd4537d1c9281bf8813bac03d84004e55b5bf415ec99

Added a --level command option that provides better logging from the multi-language scan engine. To turn on logging for a specific log level, use one of these values: ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG, or TRACE.

Use this option only when the Contrast Support team instructs you to do so rather than using it with all scans

Changed the maximum log size to 20MB before creating a new log file.

Due to a bug that caused the source code scan engine to fail, all customers should upgrade their local scanner to version 1.1.2 to resume operations.

All previous versions are now considered end of life.

To help you understand the Contrast version control policy, Scan local engine releases and versions describes the policy that applies to all future releases.

MD5 checksum: 7be87ce1ab990c45e91c7060e5300ce2

SHA1 checksum: e55d9fa9323dc93bc29d4f68e927763c6e5fb12b

SHA256 checksum: ef8c84c1ad4549ab4e22a638dbf5d5d4d5700f6209ddcabfe66a20639880e0be

The Scan local engine now creates a unique output folder for each scan. The location of the folder name is: .contrast-scan/<CURRENT_TIMESTAMP>. where <CURRENT_TIMESTAMP> is the date and time when the scan ran.

Updated configuration for C/C++ languages to avoid duplication of results.

In previous versions of the Scan local engine, scans analyzed .h and .c files using C++ and C rules. This behavior generated duplicate vulnerabilities. The latest version of the scan engine no longer generates duplicate vulnerabilities. If you had this issue previously, when you run the new version of the scan engine, it will change the status of the duplicates to Remediated.

MD5 checksum: 4ad02dbb651afd65aa34540b74070460

SHA1 checksum: 31fe66afb757422aab0cb9f59fc4f1d858146bce

SHA256 checksum: 3f7fe7b9940c78b98721fdd865a058e0e3b61b65e45cd905615b91a828128ff7

Added these exclusions to the Java binary scanner: com.azure, org.apache, and com.nimbusds.

Added a --severity parameter for the Scan local engine to let you get a build fail status. The specified values is the minimum level of severity that returns a build fail status code that you can use to gate builds in pipelines.

For example, if you specify --severity high, a finding of that severity or higher returns a build fail status code.

Added support for multi-branch scanning when using the GitHub action for the Scan local engine.

You can now download the Scan local engine with a reusable script.

Improved the Scan architecture to allow scanning of larger source code repos and faster processing of a large amount of findings.

MD5 checksum: 4ad02dbb651afd65aa34540b74070460

SHA1 checksum: 31fe66afb757422aab0cb9f59fc4f1d858146bce

SHA256 checksum: 3f7fe7b9940c78b98721fdd865a058e0e3b61b65e45cd905615b91a828128ff7

Added a --timeout CLI option that lets you control the maximum time the multi-language source code scan engine scans the specified source code.

The value for this option is a specified number of minutes. This option applies to each language. For example, if you set the value of this option to 120 minutes and your repo contains four languages, potentially, the scan can take up to eight hours (120 minutes x 4 languages).

This feature is only available for the Contrast local scan engine only.

Added support for file and folder exclusions.

To use this feature, add a file named .contrast-scan.json to the root folder of the source code you are going to scan. Exclude files and folders describes how to use this feature.

This feature is only available for the Contrast local scan engine and is only supported for multi-language source code scans.

The file format for the JSON file is:

// File name  ".contrast-scan.json"
{
  "excludes": [
    "**/MavenWrapperDownloader.java",
    "**/*.js"
  ]
}

Scans automatically fail if the multi-language source code scan engine doesn't find any technologies in the submitted code.

Fixed a bug that could cause a race condition, resulting in slow performance.

Fixed a bug that caused incorrect date formats to be generated in the SARIF output. The incorrect formats caused which caused errors when using the SARIF output in Github.

Added support for scanning in the repo for Github customers.

Starting with 1.0.8, Scan supports a new Github action that supports main branch scanning in a Github repo. This feature supports failing builds based on the presence of a specified vulnerability severity (or higher). Learn more at Use Contrast Scan with GitHub repositories.

Increased the minimum memory requirement for the multi-language scan engine to 8 GB and the timeout setting to 60 minutes.  This does not replace the minimum memory requirement of 12 GB when scanning .JAR and .WAR files using the Java binary scanner.  We continue to recommend that all users of the local scan engine should ensure that 12 GB of memory is available when running scans.

Addressed a number of issues that prevented some languages from being correctly identified by the multi-language source code scan engine when scanned by the local scan engine. All languages identified by the mult- language source code scan engine should now correctly identify and be scanned.

Increased the memory that the multi-language source code scan engine uses to 2G to better support larger code bases. The minimum memory requirement when using the local scan engine is still 12GB.

Added a --memory parameter to the CLI that you can use to override the allocated memory for the multi-language source code scan engine.

Added additional logging to capture the parameters used when invoking the local scan engine. This logging captures the entire invocation command for the local scan engine (for example, -r, -p and so forth) for use when troubleshooting errors.

Addressed an issue when scanning .NET applications that resulted in source code being  incorrectly identified

Addressed an issue that caused the multi-language scan engine to ignore ABAP code when presented in a code artifact

Fixed a bug that prevented VB.NET and Scala source code from being correctly identified and scanned by the multi-language engine.

Fixed an issue in role-based access control authentication that could trigger a 403 error when you try to assign a project to an empty resource group or when a user has access to multiple resource groups and they do not specify one.

If role-based access control is turned on, the -r <ResourceGroupName> option in the Contrast CLI is now mandatory when you create a scan project.

The Contrast local scan engine now supports the ability to scan source code for over 25 languages. For a complete list of supported languages, see Contrast Scan supported languages.

The local scan engine can now run natively under Windows environments running a suitable JVM.

Fixed an issue where using spaces in the path for an artifact to be scanned caused a fatal scan error.

Removed an unneeded log from the local scan engine, reducing overall disk space utilization when scanning Java binary files (JAR or WAR files).

Fixed an issue that caused the local scan engine to fail when running under Alpine Linux.

Fixed a bug that prevented the local scanner from reporting all vulnerabilities found across multiple JAR files. Only the last JAR file scanned in the ZIP file was reported.

MD5 checksum: f57f9174d0643832f9e38b95998fe280

SHA checksum: 8b2f5680111c5a4e5999a3449ee871bb822d27f6

Added the ability to specify a resource group as a parameter in the local scan engine when you scan a project for the first time.

To use this feature, your organization must have role-based access control enabled and you require sufficient permissions to create a new project (Manage Project Role or higher).

Specify the resource group name using the -r parameter.

MD5 checksum: 0fa38c5c9e46e3b2c6bdb2d2ed3baa20

SHA checksum: 76fe00f7d70d45176904a2b62a9d1083f0731a03

Support for multi-JAR scanning

This release adds the ability to scan multiple JAR files as one artifact. You can add multiple JAR files to a ZIP file and scan it as a single artifact.

To scan a multi-JAR ZIP file, package the JAR files at the top level in a ZIP file and scan it using the Scan local engine, as normal. For example:

multiple-jar-artifact.zip 
-> artifact1.jar 
-> artifact2.jar 
-> artifact3.jar

Once completed, the Contrast web interface displays the scan as a single project under the Scans tab.

When your download a CSV file that contains more than 2,000 vulnerabilities, you are now prompted to select individual pages of results that contain up to 2,000 vulnerabilities. For example, if a report contains 5,400 vulnerabilities, when you download it, you have the option of selecting Page 1, Page 2, or Page 3. You download each page individually and can combine them afterwards.

Selecting multiple pages is not supported.

Increased the number of vulnerabilities included in the Attestation report from 100 to 3,000.

Increased the number of vulnerabilities included in the General Vulnerability report to 3,000

Added a new column to the Vulnerabilities tab that shows the CWE for the vulnerability. This column can has a filter you can use to refine the view.

Added the ability for a user with the View, edit, and delete project action (role-based access control) or Organization Admin (organization users and groups access control) to change the severity of a detected vulnerability.

To change the severity of a vulnerability, select the current severity and select an option from the dropdown (for example, select High and change it to Critical or Medium).

If more than one vulnerability of the same type exists, you have the option of changing the severity for the selected vulnerability only or the severity of all matching vulnerabilities. Future scans do not override this severity change.

Added a Secure Code Warrior Guidelines tab to an individual vulnerability. This tab uses the associated CWE for a particular vulnerability to provide Secure Code warrior guidelines and training video information. The purpose of this information is to provide additional context on the vulnerability and ways to resolve it.

Where possible, the guidelines reflect the vulnerability language. If the CWE does not support that language is not supported, the tab displays generic guidelines. If no guidelines or information exists for a specific CWE, the tab is not available.

Fixed an issue where changing the status of a vulnerability to Not a Problem could change to Remediated if subsequent scans didn't discover the vulnerability. Now, the status of Not a Problem never changes.

To have vulnerabilities assessed again, change the status to Confirmed or Suspicious.

You can now change the status of a single vulnerability and apply that change to all vulnerabilities of the same type.

Added the ability to create tags for Scan projects.

Add tags to Scan projects describes how to use this feature.

NEW: General Vulnerability report: a PDF report based on the CSV report.

This report includes the first 3,000 open vulnerabilities in the project based on severity and status.

Added the ability to change the status for all vulnerabilities of the same type simultaneously.

If you update the status of a large number of vulnerabilities (1,000 or more) at one time, this change can take several minutes to complete. Contrast displays a message in the web interface when this action is done.

Added the ability to use the last Contrast Scan date to filter and sort scan projects.

Added the ability to update the status of multiple vulnerabilities at the same time, as described in Batch edit Scan vulnerability status.

Fixed an issue that prevented some how-to-fix information from displaying correctly for VB.NET and ABAP vulnerabilities

Added the ability to see the language associated with a detected vulnerability.

To see content in the new Language column, run a new scan in the project. The Contrast web interface doesn't display the language for older scans.

If you are using the Scan local engine, you must use version 1.1.1. Using an earlier version of the local scan engine results in the Contrast web interface displaying Composite as the language. If you see this and you are using the Scan local engine, upgrade to version 1.1.1.

Added the ability to filter views based on the language associated with a detected vulnerability.

Fixed a bug that prevented the How-to-fix information from being properly displayed in the Web interface.

Fixed an issue that caused C++ and C# vulnerabilities to be counted twice.  

As a result of this change, the system remediation workflow marks duplicate vulnerabilities as remediated for C++. For C#, these vulnerabilities remain open.

Due to performance issues when generating the Scan attestation report, the report is now limited to generating 100 open vulnerabilities, by severity and status. Larger reports will be supported in the future.

Addressed an issue with file uploads to Contrast where files over 500 MB could cause out of memory (OOM) errors, especially when you used the Scan CLI commands. . This fix does not increase the file upload size beyond 1GB but provides a consistent user experience between uploads to the Contrast web interface and with the CLI. If you have repos that are larger than 1 GB, consider using the Contrast Scan local engine.

Enhanced the CSV report to include code snippets for each vulnerability.

Changed the CSV report so that you can see the file name and line number from the path for each vulnerability.

Changed the CSV report to exclude vulnerabilities with a Remediated and Not a problem status.

Added the ability to supply a filter to the API call when generating a CSV report programmatically.

To aid in timely generation of the CSV report and address performance issues, the CSV report is now limited to the first 2,000 open entries based on severity and status.

Added pagination to the API when generating a CSV report so it can exceed the 2,000 line limit.

Improved the Scan architecture to allow scanning of larger source code repos and faster processing of a large amount of findings.

Fixed a bug that could cause a race condition, resulting in slow performance in the Contrast web interface.

Fixed a bug in the Contrast web interface that resulted in an error when specifying an underscore (_) as part of a search parameter when searching projects.

Added a detected language column on the vulnerabilities tab for a scan project. This value identifies the language associated with the vulnerability.

On the vulnerabilities tab for a scan project, added the ability to filter the view by detected language.

This release includes an automated Jira integration supporting SAST.

When you configure this Jira integration, you can automatically push notifications about vulnerabilities to a Jira project. To configure this integration, specify a single Jira project and one or more severity levels. Learn more in Jira Cloud.

Support for multiple Jira projects is planned for a future release.

Addressed a number of issues preventing some languages from being correctly identified by the multi-language source code scan engine.

January 25, 2024

New and improved;

Bug fixes:

December 14, 2023

November 28, 2023

November 8, 2023

June 30, 2023

June 12, 2023

Added support for multi-JAR scanning in the Java binary scanner.

You can now include multiple JAR files in a single ZIP file when you use the hosted Java binary scanner (using the Contrast CLI or the Contrast web interface).

The maximum upload size limit for a ZIP file is 1 GB.

Added a vulnerability activity tab that shows information on status changes made to vulnerabilities within a project.

To view this tab, select the Vulnerabilities tab for selected scan project and then, select a specific vulnerability

Added the requirement to add comments when you change the status of a vulnerability in a project.

Added the ability to delete a project and all associated data in the Contrast web interface for users with a Manage all projects role.