Hiding in Plain Sight - The Untold Story of Hidden Vulnerabilities

No ratings

Presented at BSidesLV 2023 by

Yotam Perkal

Ofri Ouzan

In today’s software development landscape, vulnerability scanners and SCA tools play a vital role in identifying potentially vulnerable software components and mitigating associated risks. However, their effectiveness remains questionable due to differences in implementation, coverage, and performance, as well as inherent blindspots that make them oblivious to critical vulnerabilities in real-world scenarios. In this talk, we will present the results of a groundbreaking benchmark and root cause analysis research that evaluated leading commercial and open-source vulnerability scanners and SCA tools. We will showcase the main causes of scanner misidentifications, including blindspots created by common build and deployment practices, and thousands of hidden vulnerabilities we identified in real-world applications, many of which are known to be exploited in the wild. Our findings expose a significant gap in the effectiveness of these tools and raise awareness about the need for objective evaluation criteria. Attendees will leave with a better understanding of the limitations of vulnerability scanners and SCA tools, as well as the importance of adopting more holistic approaches to software security.