Unified Agent (UA)

Overview

The Unified Agent is a Java command-line tool that scans directories' open source components for vulnerable libraries and license complications and displays the results in the WhiteSource web application. The Unified Agent works the following way: Directories are scanned and identify the open-source components, whereupon the Unified Agent checks each new component against organizational policies (note that no source code is scanned - only descriptive information is sent to WhiteSource).

At the end of the Unified Agent's scan, it aggregates the information and uploads it to the WhiteSource web application, where it is presented in an Organization/Product/Project hierarchy, enabling you to view and analyze the scan results. Additionally, an informative report of the results is generated in HTML and JSON formats, located in the 'whitesource' folder. This folder is created in the directory where the Unified Agent ran.

Prerequisites

Java JDK/JRE installation is required in order to run the Unified Agent. The following versions of Java are supported:

Java JDK 8
Java JRE 8
Java JDK 11

Additionally, depending on what you are scanning, ensure that the relevant build tools, package managers, etc. are installed.

Installation

Download the Unified Agent .jar file from here.
Download the configuration file from here and place it in the same directory as the Unified Agent.

Configuring the Unified Agent

Enter the following parameters in the configuration file:

apiKey - unique identifier of the organization. It can be retrieved from the 'Integrate' page in your WhiteSource account
userKey - unique identifier of user, and it is optional. It can be generated from the 'Profile' page in your WhiteSource account. With the user key WhiteSource recognize who run the scan.
wss.url - enable the relevant URL according to your organization's WS Server URL from your Profile page on the Server URLs panel (additionally, it can be found in the Integrate tab). Then, add the agent path. in config file. There tree versions of wss.url:
- #wss.url=https://saas.whitesourcesoftware.com/agent
- #wss.url=https://app.whitesourcesoftware.com/agent
- ```
wss.url=https://app-eu.whitesourcesoftware.com/agent (our WhiteSource run under this url)
```
productToken - identified what product we scan. After we add a new product, productToken can be retrieved from the 'Integrate' page in your WhiteSource account. In the product we can define many projects.
projectToken - after run the scan, output goes to the project. ProjetToken can be retrieved from the 'Integrate' page in your WhiteSource account.
- Best practices - WhiteSource recommends placing the project and product names in the configuration file (versions are optional). This is preferable for first time setup as it automatically creates a new project and product in WhiteSource. If names or versions change rapidly, then use the 'projectToken' and 'productToken' of the existing WhiteSource counterparts.

In section Polices:

checkPolicies - checkPolices=false, for now, Policies are not checking, because we don't have policies for now

In section General:

generateScanReport - uncomment, when set to true, a report in JSON format is created at the end of the scan, which includes information on vulnerabilities, policy violations, top fixes and inventory details

In the section Package Manager Dependency resolvers, there all dependencies that UA can scan (#resolveDependencies=false), all are comments so it means that all will be scanned by UA. In GEANT there are many different projects with many technologies and written in many different languages and it will be safer to scan all dependencies.

Running the Unified Agent from the Command Line

To execute the Unified Agent from the command line, run the following on the computer which the Unified Agent will scan.

Linux/macOS:

java -jar /path/to/wss-unified-agent.jar -c /path/to/wss-unified-agent.config -d /path/to/project/root/directory

Windows:

java -jar "C:\path\to\wss-unified-agent.jar" -c "C:\path\to\wss-unified-agent.config" -d "C:\path\to\project\root\directory"

Note: If scan locally you need to have to install software that the project use.

Running the Unified Agent in a Docker Container

The Unified Agent can also be executed via Docker container. A Dockerfile template containing different package managers (e.g. maven, npm, etc.) can be found here. The file includes installation commands that enable you to create a customizable run environment for scanning projects/files, plus a basic (editable) set of package managers.

Unified Agent JSON Report

A summary report in JSON format can be automatically generated locally at the end of each scan, using the 'generateScanReport' configuration parameter when running the Unified Agent.
This report includes information on vulnerabilities, policy violations, top fixes, and inventory details.

The default filename format of the JSON report is '<project_name>-<yyyy-mm-dd>T<HHmmss>+<UTC offset>-scan_report.json'.
For example: 'Demo App-2019-06-04T181226+0300-scan_report.json'

Risk Report

The risk report is a management level tool, providing a view of all aspects of the account's open-source libraries; security, quality, and compliance. It can display libraries by the organization, as well as a by-product (application).
The report is available from the "Reports" menu. More about this is here.

Sample of eduMEET project scan report:

PDF