Pipelines Under Pressure: An Empirical Study of Security Misconfigurations of GitHub Workflows
Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/ CD) pipelines have grown in popularity in recent years and are essential in streamlining the process of development and deployment of high quality software. However, developers often overlook security concerns in CI/CD pipelines, opening the door to many vulnerabilities. This paper presents an empirical investigation of nine security misconfigurations sourced from a comprehensive review of security guidelines, developer blogs, GitHub documentation, and prior research. To study the presence, co-occurrence and yearly trends of these security misconfigurations within current CI/CD practices, we analyzed a large dataset containing the most recent version of over 200000 GitHub workflow specification files, taken from open source repositories. To aid us in this study, we developed Soteria, a static analysis tool equipped with custom detectors that can systematically identify security misconfigurations. Given that less than 1% of the analyzed workflows do not include any misconfiguration, our detection tool makes a contribution to raise awareness about widespread security misconfigurations. Our findings challenge conventional practices and motivate the need for an urgent shift in how security principles are systematically applied in the development and operation of CI/CD pipelines with more robust and finer-grained security controls.
Wed 3 DecDisplayed time zone: Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rome, Stockholm, Vienna change
11:30 - 13:00 | Software Composition, Compliance, and SecurityResearch Papers / Short Papers and Posters / Industry Papers at Sala degli Affreschi (Fresco Room) Chair(s): Eriks Klotins Blekinge Institute of Technology | ||
11:30 15mTalk | AI Alignment for Ethical Compliance and Risk Mitigation in Industrial Applications Research Papers Rushali Gupta Lund University, Qunying Song University College London, Matthias Wagner Lund University, Emelie Engstrom Lund University, Emma Söderberg Lund University, Markus Borg CodeScene, Per Runeson Lund University | ||
11:45 15mTalk | FOSS-chain: using blockchain for Open Source Software license compliance Research Papers Kypros Iacovou University of Cyprus, Georgia Kapitsaki University of Cyprus, Evangelia Vanezi University of Cyprus File Attached | ||
12:00 15mTalk | Pipelines Under Pressure: An Empirical Study of Security Misconfigurations of GitHub Workflows Research Papers Edoardo Riggio Software Institute - USI, Lugano, Cesare Pautasso Software Institute, Faculty of Informatics, USI Lugano DOI | ||
12:15 15mTalk | Policy-driven Software Bill of Materials on GitHub: An Empirical Study Research Papers Oleksii Novikov Blekinge Institute of Technology, Davide Fucci Blekinge Institute of Technology, Oleksandr Adamov Blekinge Institute of Technology, Daniel Mendez Blekinge Institute of Technology and fortiss | ||
12:30 10mTalk | Cross-Domain Evaluation of Transformer-Based Vulnerability Detection on Open & Industry Data Industry Papers Moritz Mock Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Thomas Forrer Wurth Phoenix S.r.l., Barbara Russo Free University of Bolzano DOI Pre-print File Attached | ||
12:40 7mTalk | Detecting and Characterizing Low and No Functionality Packages in the NPM Ecosystem Short Papers and Posters Napasorn Tevarut Kasetsart University, Brittany Reid Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Yutaro Kashiwa Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Pattara Leelaprute Kasetsart University, Arnon Rungsawang Kasetsart University, Bundit Manaskasemsak Kasetsart University, Hajimu Iida Nara Institute of Science and Technology File Attached | ||
12:47 7mTalk | An Empirical Study of Security-Policy Related Issues in Open Source Projects Short Papers and Posters Rintaro Kanaji Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Brittany Reid Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Yutaro Kashiwa Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Raula Gaikovina Kula The University of Osaka, Hajimu Iida Nara Institute of Science and Technology File Attached | ||