bearer VS packj

My team and I released Bearer a couple of weeks ago, a newer open and free alternative to Brakeman to check your code for security and privacy risks. In addition to Ruby/Rails, we also cover your JS/TS code, which allows you to use a single solution for your whole Rails application.

Code security scanning tool (SAST) to discover, filter and prioritize security and privacy risks.

Code security scanning tool (SAST) to discover, filter and prioritize security and privacy risks.

Link to the Recipe https://github.com/Bearer/bearer/blob/main/pkg/classificatio...

Hi HN,

I’m Guillaume, the cofounder of Bearer, an Open Source SAST solution.

After launching a few weeks ago here on Hacker News with support for Ruby and JavaScript stacks, I’m happy to report we’ve just released a new version (v1.2) with TypeScript support!

In terms of code coverage, we use the same rules already implemented for vanilla JavaScript, but as usual, you can build your own.

The rules list is here: https://docs.bearer.com/reference/rules/

It’s a first version for TS, but we believe that thanks to the pre-existing JavaScript support it should already provide good insights.

If you have some TypeScript code, we would love for you to try it out and let us know in the comment below or on our Discord your experience and how we can improve the findings.

You can access the repo here: https://github.com/Bearer/bearer

Thank you again!

It can be challenging to keep up with security best practices. In addition to watching for vulnerability reports, you can also run regular scans on your codebase with a SAST tool like Bearer CLI. It's a free and secure way to get practical security feedback on your ruby code. Check it out on GitHub at bearer/bearer.

Using open-source tools to test open-source projects feels like a great match. It wasn't until the other day that I remembered that the team behind DEV had open-sourced the bones of the site as Forem. To make it an even better match, the stack matches up nicely with the currently supported languages included in Bearer's new free and open-source security application security testing (SAST) tool. Unlike many security tools, this one is really focused on helping devs make sense of security concerns in an actionable way.

Good news! There’s a free open-source tool that can scan your code, check for known risks, and give you a list of things that need fixing. All are sorted by how risky the code is—based on things like how sensitive the data is and how damaging a breach or leak would be. It’s called Bearer.

Creator of Packj [1] here. How do you envision sandboxing/security policies will be specified? Per-lib policies when you've hundreds of dependencies will become overwhelming. Having built an eBPF-based sandbox [2], I anticipate that accuracy will be another challenge here: too restrictive will block functionality, too permissive defeats the purpose.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious/risky NPM/PyPI/RubyGems/Rust/Maven/PHP packages by carrying out static+dynamic+metadata analysis.

Cool project. How do you feel about projects like OpenSSF scorecards or even the checks that socket.dev do today on these packages to help determine risk?

https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj/blob/main/.packj.yaml

Secondly, what about impersonation where attackers imitate a popular package and its respective metadata?

I built Packj [1] sandboxing for securing “pip/NPM install”. It uses strace for sandboxing and blocks access to sensitive files and limits traffic to known-good IP addresses.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj

Great work! This provenance check is going to be very valuable for enforcing supply-chain security. We are working on adding support to check for provenance in Packj.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags risky/malicious NPM/PyPI/Ruby dependencies

Cool project. Would love to integrate this in Packj [1] as one of the open-source SAST scanners. Will DM you.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious/risky open-source dependencies.

Very cool! I've built something similar, but for packages: https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj Would love to talk.

Working on a marketplace (based on Packj [1]) to allow open-source developers to make money by selling "assured" software artifacts.

1. Packj https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious and other "risky" open-source dependencies in your software supply chain.

I’ve created Packj sandbox [1] for “safe installation” of PyPI/NPM/Rubygems packages

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj

It DOES NOT require a VM/Container; uses strace. It shows you a preview of file system changes that installation will make and can also block arbitrary network communication during installation (uses an allow-list).

Great to see a developer-friendly tool around OSV! Packj [1] uses OSV APIs to report vulnerable PyPI/NPM/Rubygems packages. Disclaimer: I built it.

1. https://github.com/ossillate-inc/packj flags malicious/risky packages.