WhiteSource unveils free open source Vulnerability Checker

WhiteSource announced the release of its Vulnerability Checker, a free tool that provides companies with immediate, real-time alerts on the 50 most critical open source vulnerabilities published in the open source community.

The new standalone CLI tool is free to use and available for anyone to download as a desktop application directly from the WhiteSource website. Once downloaded, the Vulnerability Checker offers users the opportunity to import and scan any library and run a quick check on the chosen development project against last month’s top 50 vulnerabilities.

The Vulnerability Checker provides an alert if any open source component within the scanned library contains one or more of the top new open source security vulnerabilities enumerated in the previous month’s report.

Every month, open source community contributors and researchers publish dozens of new security vulnerabilities found in open source projects. In its Top Open Source Vulnerabilities of the Month” report, the WhiteSource research team outlines the vulnerabilities most impactful to users over the course of the past month to help promote and facilitate proper open source security and compliance.

WhiteSource’s new Vulnerability Checker syncs with its research team’s monthly reports, and detects all open source components in users’ projects, providing an immediate alert if any of the month’s top new vulnerabilities are detected.

“With our new Vulnerability Checker, we can provide everyone — from our largest enterprise customers to young developers — quick and accurate data on their open source usage,” said Rami Sass, WhiteSource’s CEO. “This new tool is a great way for us to enable all developers to leverage the open source data continuously collected by the WhiteSource database, and gain insight into their open source usage, empowering them with the critical open source security information that they need”.