audit-ci

This module is intended to be consumed by your favourite continuous integration tool to halt execution if npm audit or yarn audit finds vulnerabilities at or above the specified threshold while ignoring allowlisted advisories.

Requirements

• Node >=8 (except Yarn Berry, which requires Node >=12.13.0)
• (Optional) Yarn ^1.12.3 || Yarn >=2.4.0

Set up

Install audit-ci during your CI environment using npx or as a devDependency.

npx audit-ci --moderate

Alternatively, for the devDependency approach with NPM:

npm install --save-dev audit-ci

or, using yarn:

yarn add -D audit-ci

The next section gives examples using audit-ci in various CI environments. It assumes that medium, high, and critical severity vulnerabilities prevent build continuation. For simplicity, the examples use npx and do not use a config file.

GitHub Actions

steps:
  - uses: actions/checkout@v2
  - name: Audit for vulnerabilities
    run: npx audit-ci --moderate

CircleCI

# ... excludes set up for job
steps:
  - checkout
  - run:
      name: update-npm
      command: "sudo npm install -g npm"
  - restore_cache:
      key: dependency-cache-{{ checksum "package.json" }}
  - run:
      name: install-npm
      command: "npm install --no-audit"
  # This should run immediately after installation to reduce
  # the risk of executing a script from a compromised NPM package.
  - run:
      name: run-audit-ci
      command: npx audit-ci --moderate
      # If you use a pull-request-only workflow,
      # it's better to not run audit-ci on `main` and only run it on pull requests.
      # For more info: https://github.com/IBM/audit-ci/issues/69
      # For a PR-only workflow, use the below command instead of the above command:
      #
      # command: if [[ ! -z $CIRCLE_PULL_REQUEST ]] ; then audit-ci --moderate ; fi

Travis-CI

Auditing only on PR builds is recommended

scripts:
  # This script should be the first that runs to reduce the risk of
  # executing a script from a compromised NPM package.
  - if [ "${TRAVIS_PULL_REQUEST}" != "false" ]; then npx audit-ci --moderate; fi

For Travis-CI not using PR builds:

scripts:
  - npx audit-ci --moderate

Options

Args	Alias	Description
-l	--low	Prevents integration with low or higher vulnerabilities (default false)
-m	--moderate	Prevents integration with moderate or higher vulnerabilities (default false)
-h	--high	Prevents integration with high or critical vulnerabilities (default false)
-c	--critical	Prevents integration only with critical vulnerabilities (default false)
-p	--package-manager	Choose a package manager [choices: auto, npm, yarn] (default auto)
-a	--allowlist	Vulnerable modules, advisories, and paths to allowlist from preventing integration (default none)
-d	--directory	The directory containing the package.json to audit (default ./)
	--pass-enoaudit	Pass if no audit is performed due to the registry returning ENOAUDIT (default false)
	--show-found	Show allowlisted advisories that are found (default true)
	--show-not-found	Show allowlisted advisories that are not found (default true)
	--registry	The registry to resolve packages by name and version (default to unspecified)
	--report-type	Format for the audit report results [choices: important, summary, full] (default important)
	--retry-count	The number of attempts audit-ci calls an unavailable registry before failing (default 5)
	--config	Path to JSON config file
	--skip-dev	Skip auditing devDependencies (default false)
	--advisories	[DEPRECATED] Vulnerable advisory ids to whitelist from preventing integration (default none)
-w	--whitelist	[DEPRECATED] Vulnerable modules to whitelist from preventing integration (default none)
	--path-whitelist	[DEPRECATED] Vulnerable module paths to whitelist from preventing integration (default none)

The options --advisories, --path-whitelist, --whitelist, and -w are deprecated in favour of -a (alias --allowlist) which merge the functionality of all of the deprecated arguments into one argument.

(Optional) Config file specification

A config file can manage auditing preferences audit-ci. The config file's keys match the CLI arguments.

{
  // Only use one of ["low": true, "moderate": true, "high": true, "critical": true]
  "low": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `false`
  "moderate": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `false`
  "high": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `false`
  "critical": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `false`
  "allowlist": <(string | number)[]>, // [Optional] default `[]`
  "report-type": <string>, // [Optional] defaults `important`
  "package-manager": <string>, // [Optional] defaults `"auto"`
  "pass-enoaudit": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `false`
  "show-found": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `true`
  "show-not-found": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `true`
  "registry": <string>, // [Optional] defaults `undefined`
  "retry-count": <number>, // [Optional] defaults 5
  "skip-dev": <boolean>, // [Optional] defaults `false`
  "advisories": <number[]>, // [Deprecated, optional] defaults `[]`
  "path-whitelist": <string[]>, // [Deprecated, optional] defaults `[]`
  "whitelist": <string[]> // [Deprecated, optional] defaults `[]`
}

Review the examples section for an example of config file usage.

Refrain from using "directory" within the config file because directory is relative to where the command is run, rather than the directory where the config file exists.

Examples

Prevents build on moderate, high, or critical vulnerabilities; ignores low

npx audit-ci -m

Prevents build on any vulnerability except advisory 690 and all of lodash and base64url, don't show allowlisted

npx audit-ci -l -a 690 lodash base64url --show-found false

Prevents build with critical vulnerabilities showing the full report

audit-ci --critical --report-type full

Continues build regardless of vulnerabilities, but show the summary report

npx audit-ci --report-type summary

Example config file and different directory usage

test/npm-config-file/audit-ci.json

{
  "low": true,
  "package-manager": "auto",
  "allowlist": [
    100,
    101,
    "example1",
    "example2",
    "52|example3",
    "880|example4",
    "880|example5>example4"
  ],
  "registry": "https://registry.npmjs.org"
}

npx audit-ci --directory test/npm-config-file --config test/npm-config-file/audit-ci.json

Q&A

Why run audit-ci on PR builds for Travis-CI and not the push builds?

If audit-ci is run on the PR build and not on the push build, you can continue to push new code and create PRs parallel to the actual vulnerability fix. However, they can't be merged until the fix is implemented. Since audit-ci performs the audit on the PR build, it will always have the most up-to-date dependencies vs. the push build, which would require a manual merge with main before passing the audit.

NPM/Yarn is returning ENOAUDIT and is breaking my build, what do I do?

The config option --pass-enoaudit allows passing if no audit is performed due to the registry returning ENOAUDIT. It is false by default to reduce the risk of merging in a vulnerable package. However, if the convenience of passing is more important for your project then you can add --pass-enoaudit into the CLI or add it to the config.