Black Duck Solution Tackles Open Source Vulnerabilities

Open source software management firm Black Duck Software has launched a new solution that helps security and development teams find and remediate security vulnerabilities in open source software.

Dubbed “Black Duck Hub”, the solution helps customers identify open source used within their code, identify known security vulnerabilities, and triage, schedule, and track remediation, the company said.

“With more than 4,000 new open source vulnerabilities reported each year, understanding what open source is used within an organization is critical,” Black Duck said in a statement. “Thousands of unknown open source vulnerabilities go unnoticed within a typical enterprise.”

Leveraging a KnowledgeBase of license and vulnerability data, Black Duck Hub identifies open source usage, maps known open source vulnerabilities, and tracks remediation efforts.

The Black Duck KB includes over ten years’ worth of data, more than 1 million software projects from more than 6,000 sites, and detailed data for more than 2,000 unique licenses, including vulnerabilities, full license text and dozens of encoded attributes and obligations for each license. 

The software company explained that the Black Duck Hub runs as part of the build process, automatically discovering and identifying open source as it enters the code stream and flagging open source libraries that have known vulnerabilities. “Vulnerability details are used to assess application and portfolio risk, in addition to open source license and community activity risk. Remediation scheduling and tracking enable security professionals to ensure critical vulnerabilities are remediated,” the company said.

“Most companies do not have an automated mechanism to identify new open source as it enters a code base. Moreover, they are unable to determine the actual risk and impact from vulnerabilities. Without this knowledge, companies have no way to triage and track vulnerability remediation efforts over time,“ said Bill Ledingham, EVP and CTO of Black Duck Software.

“The Black Duck Hub helps security and development teams identify and mitigate open source related risks across an application portfolio,” Ledingham said. “The product’s ability to automatically map industry-identified security vulnerabilities to assess risk, prioritize issues, and track remediation means Black Duck is uniquely positioned in the market to provide the most comprehensive language coverage and dev-tools integration with integrated remediation tracking and management.”