GitHub Actions Integration

Introduction

GitHub Actions is a platform for continuous integration in GitHub repositories. An action encodes a reusable task with configurable parameters.

Xygeni provides a xygeni-action for downloading and running the scanner on the repository.

The following configuration examples show how to install & run the scanner using an API Token stored as a secret named XYGENI_TOKEN. See Generate Xygeni API Token for Scanner or ask your Xygeni administrator to generate it.

Usage

The xygeni-action action downloads, configures and executes the Xygeni Scanner on the repository where the action is invoked.

Setting API token as encrypted secret in GitHub

The scanner needs an API token to communicate with the Xygeni platform. Such API token is a secret that could be registered safely at the appropriate scope (organization, repository or environment) using GitHub Encrypted Secrets.

For example, to register the API token as a secret named XYGENI_TOKEN, for repository in the current working directory. you may use the GitHub gh command:

# The command will prompt you to enter the secret value
gh secret set XYGENI_TOKEN

# Alternatively you may read the value of the API token from a local file
gh secret set XYGENI_TOKEN < /path/to/xygeni_token.txt

(You must be the repository owner for creating repository secrets.)

For creating encryption secret at environment scope in a personal account repository (you need to be the repository owner), add --env ENV_NAME:

# Set the secret available to private repositories only
gh secret set --env ENV_NAME XYGENI_TOKEN

For creating encryption secret at organization scope (so the secret is available to all or a subset of the organization repositories), add --org ORG_NAME:

# GitHub CLI does not have admin:org permission by default
gh auth login --scopes "admin:org"

# Set the secret available to private repositories only
gh secret set --org ORG_NAME XYGENI_TOKEN

# Or set the secret available to all organization repositories
gh secret set --org ORG_NAME XYGENI_TOKEN --visibility all

# Or limit visibility of the secret to the selected repos
gh secret set --org ORG_NAME XYGENI_TOKEN --visibility all

You may use the corresponding GitHub webpages for setting the api token as a secret named XYGENI_TOKEN at the appropriate scope.

Add a step calling the action

In a GitHub workflow (.github/workflows/*.yml) the Xygeni scanner could be run on the repository files, typically after actions/checkout to retrieve the branch sources. The GITHUB_WORKSPACE environment variable will contain the default location of the repository when using the checkout action.

You can configure a GitHub action with the form:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches: [ main, develop ]
  pull_request:
    branches: [ main, develop ]

jobs:
  xygeni-scan:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: xygeni-github-action
    steps:
      # Checkout the repository sources (GITHUB_WORKSPACE)
      - name: Checkout
        uses: actions/checkout@v3.1.0

      - name: Xygeni-Scanner
        uses: xygeni/xygeni-action@3.2.0
        id: Xygeni-Scanner
        with:
          token: ${{ secrets.XYGENI_TOKEN }}
          gh_token: ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}

Where XYGENI_TOKEN is the name of the encrypted secret where the API token was saved.

Parameters

Only the API token (or alternatively the username + password) is required.

The default values for some parameters can be changed. For example, you may specify a specific name for the project instead of the GitHub repository name,GITHUB_REPOSITORY. Also, you may want to scan a particular source subdirectory instead of the default, por example ${{ github.repository }}/src.

You can see more information about default GitHub environment variables here.

The available parameters for the action are:

Parameter	Description	Mandatory	Default value
xygeni_url	Base URL of the Xygeni API.	No	https://api.xygeni.com
gh_token	GitHub token to retrieve repository information for misconfigurations and compliance.	No	${GITHUB_TOKEN}
directory	Directory to analyze	No	${{ github.workspace }}
token	API token	No
username	Xygeni account’s username. Not recommended, use token instead.	No
password	Xygeni account’s password. Not recommended, use token instead.	No
command	Command to execute by the scanner	No	scan --never-fail -n ${{ github.repository }} -d /app

Use --never-fail to avoid breaking the build if the scan finds issues or fails. You may also use --fail_on=critical to terminate the build only when critical issues are found.

Use --run=secrets,iac if you want to scan only for secrets and IaC flaws, for example.

Example for scanning only hard-coded secrets and IaC flaws detectors, and failing the build only when critical issues are found:

  - name: Xygeni-Scanner
    uses: xygeni/xygeni-action@v2.1
    id: Xygeni-Scanner
    with:
      token: ${{ secrets.XYGENI_TOKEN }}
      command: >-
         scan -n ${{ github.repository }} -d ${{ github.repository }}
              --run=secrets,iac --fail-on=critical

You may use pinned versions for the action, using the immutable commit SHA instead of version numbers, as specified in Pin actions to full length commit SHA.