Add SBOM Generation to Your GitHub Project with Syft
According to the latest figures, GitHub has over 100 million developers working on over 420 million repositories, with at least 28M being public repos. Unfortunately, very few software repos contain a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) inventory of what’s been released.
SBOMs (Software Bill of Materials) are crucial in a repository as they provide a comprehensive inventory of all components, improving transparency and traceability in the software supply chain. This allows developers and security teams to quickly identify and address vulnerabilities, enhancing overall security and compliance with regulatory standards.
Anchore developed the sbom-action GitHub Action to automatically generate an SBOM using Syft. Developers can quickly add the action via the GitHub Marketplace and pretty much fire and forget the setup.
What is an SBOM?
Anchore developers have written plenty over the years about What is an SBOM, but here is the tl;dr:
An SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) is a detailed list of all software project components, libraries, and dependencies. It serves as a comprehensive inventory that helps understand the software’s structure and the origins of its components.
An SBOM in your project enhances security by quickly identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities in third-party components. Additionally, it ensures compliance with regulatory standards and provides transparency, essential for maintaining trust with stakeholders and users.
Introducing Anchore’s SBOM GitHub Action
Adding an SBOM is a cinch with the GitHub Action for SBOM Generation provided by Anchore. Once added to a repo the action will execute a Syft scan in the workspace directory and upload a workflow artifact SBOM in SPDX format.
The SBOM Action can scan a Docker image directly from the container registry with or without registry credentials specified. Alternatively, it can scan a directory full of artifacts or a specific single file.
The action will also detect if it’s being run during the GitHub release and upload the SBOM as a release asset. Easy!
How to Add the SBOM GitHub Action to Your Project
Assuming you already have a GitHub account and repository setup, adding the SBOM action is straightforward.
- Navigate to the GitHub Marketplace
- Search for “Anchore SBOM Action” or visit Anchore SBOM Action directly
- Add the action to your repository by clicking the green “Use latest version” button
- Configure the action in your workflow file
That’s it!
Example Workflow Configuration
Here’s a bare-bones configuration for running the Anchore SBOM Action on each push to the repo.
name: Generate SBOM
on: [push]
jobs:
build:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Anchore SBOM Action
uses: anchore/[email protected]There are further options detailed on the GitHub Marketplace page for the action. For example, use output-file to specify the resulting SBOM file name and format to select whether to build an SPDX or CycloneDX formatted SBOM.
Results and Benefits
After the GitHub action is set up, the SBOM will start being generated on each push or with every release – depending on your configuration.
Once the SBOM is published on your GitHub repo, users can analyze it to identify and address vulnerabilities in third-party components. They can also use it to ensure compliance with security and regulatory standards, maintaining the integrity of the software supply chain.
Additional Resources
The SBOM action is open source and is available under the Apache 2.0 License in the sbom-action repository. It relies on Syft which is available under the same license, also on GitHub. We welcome contributions to both sbom-action, Syft, as well as Grype, which can consume and process these generated SBOMs.
Understand, Implement & Leverage SBOMs for Stronger Security & Risk Management
