1. Home
    2. Prisma
    3. Prisma Cloud
    4. Prisma Cloud Administrator’s Guide (Compute)
    5. Vulnerability management
    6. Configure code repository scanning

    Configure code repository scanning

    Prisma Cloud can scan GitHub repositories and identify vulnerabilities in your software’s dependencies. Modern apps are increasingly composed of external, open source dependencies, so it’s important to give developers tools to assess those components early in the development lifecycle. Repository scanning gives you early insight into the software as it’s being developed, and long before apps are packaged (e.g. as a container) and deployed by CI/CD pipelines.
    Currently, Prisma Cloud supports Python, Java, and JavaScript (Node.js).

    Prerequisites

    Prisma Cloud authenticates with the GitHub API using user-generated API tokens. The following scopes are required for scanning private repos. Prisma Cloud doesn’t modify or write to your repos.
    • repo — Full control of private repositories
      • repo:status — Access commit status
      • repo_deployment — Access deployment status
      • public_repo — Access public repositories
      • repo:invite — Access repository invitations
      • security_events — Read and write security events
    If you’re scanning public repos only, select just the public_repo scope. The benefit of creating an access token for scanning public repos is that GitHub grants you a higher rate limit to their API, which Prisma Cloud utilizes for scanning.

    Deployment

    Prisma Cloud selects the repositories to scan according to a user-defined scope. For example, you might want to scan all repositories in your organization or just a subset of them. For each repo in scope, Prisma Cloud searches for well-known package manifest files, and enumerates the dependencies listed in them. Those dependencies are assessed against the latest threat data in the Intelligence Stream.
    Code repository scans is handled by Console.
    The following table lists the manifest files known to the scanner.
    Package manager
    File name
    Go
    go.sum
    Java (Gradle)
    build.gradle, build.gradle.kts, gradle.properties
    Java (Maven)
    pom.xml
    JavaScript (NPM)
    package.json, package-lock.json, npm-shrinkwrap.json, bower.json
    Python (pip)
    req*.txt
    Finally, Prisma Cloud can continuously monitor your code repositories for vulnerabilities by rescanning on every push event. Prisma Cloud integrates with GitHub using webhooks, which notify the scanner when there are changes in the repository.
    Prisma Cloud uses the GitHub API. The GitHub API is rate-limited. For unauthenticated requests, which can be used to scan public repositories, the cap is very low (60 requests/hour). Here the rate limit is gauged by IP address. For authenticated requests, which can scan either public or private repositories, the cap is 5000 requests/hour. Here the rate limit is gauged per account.

    Set up your credentials

    Generate a personal access token in GitHub, and then save it in the Prisma Cloud Credentials Store so that the scanner can access your repositories for scanning.
    1. Generate a GitHub access token.
      1. Log into your GitHub account.
      2. Go to
        Settings > Developer Settings > Personal access tokens
        .
      3. Click
        Generate new token
        .
      4. Set the scope to
        repo
        .
        If you’re scanning public repos only, select just the
        public_repo
         scope.
      5. Click
        Generate token
        . If your account requires SSO, enable it.
      6. Copy the generated token.
    2. Save the token in Prisma Cloud’s credentials store.
      1. Log into Prisma Cloud Console.
      2. Go to
        Manage > Authentication > Credentials Store
        .
      3. Click
        Add Credential
        .
      4. Enter a
        Name
         for the credential.
      5. In
        Type
        , select 'GitHub Cloud' or 'GitHub Enterprise Server' access token.
        For GitHub Enterprise Server, specify the Server URL. If you use a self-signed certificate, specify it, or choose 'Skip Verify' to skip certificate validation.
      6. In
        Access Token
        , paste the access token you generated in GitHub.
      7. Click
        Save
        .

    Configure the repos to scan

    Specify the repositories to scan. If your repository specifies dependencies in non-standard package manifest files, specify them here so the scanner can parse them. If there are manifests the scanner should ignore, specify them here as well.
    1. Open Console.
    2. Go to
      Defend > Vulnerabilities > Code Repositories
      .
    3. Click
      Add Scope
      . If this is your first repository, click
      Add the first item
      .
      Each scope spec has the following parameters:
      Field
      Description
      Provider
      Select the appropriate GitHub deployment. GitHub Cloud and GitHub Enterprise are currently the only supported providers.
      For other Git repositories, use twistcli’s coderepo scan option
      Type
      To scan all repos in an organization, including both public and private repos, set the type to
      Private
      . You’ll need to set up an access token, so that Prisma Cloud can access your repos.
      To scan public repositories not related to your account or organization, set the type to
      Public
      . When type is
      Public
      , credentials are not required, although API access to GitHub is capped to a very low value. Even if you’re only scanning public repos, we recommend that you set up an access token for authenticated access.
      Credential
      Specify credentials for the repository owner. If the credentials have already been created in the Prisma Cloud credentials store, select it. If not, click
      Add New
      .
      Repositories
      Specify the repositories to scan in the format: owner/name When you’ve selected a credential, the drop-down lists all repositories in the owner’s account.
      Wildcards are supported when the repo type is
      Private
      . They aren’t supported when the type is
      Public
      .
      Excluded manifest paths
      Specify paths to be excluded for analysis. Wildcards are supported.
      Advanced settings > Explicit manifest names
      Supported for Python only. Specify any additional file names that should be included for analysis. If you have a custom naming scheme for your manifest files, specify them here so that the scanner can find and parse them.
      Advanced settings > Python version