Snyk for .NET
Snyk offers security scanning to test your projects for vulnerabilities, both through the Snyk CLI and from the Snyk Web UI through different Snyk Integrations.
This page describes how to use Snyk to scan your .NET Projects.
Feature availability
Features may not be available, depending on your plan. See pricing plans for more details.
Snyk does not currently support PackageReference without a version attribute. If your Project lacks this, Snyk may fail to open a PR for your Project.
The current workaround is to add versions to all PackageReferences.
Once Snyk has built the tree, Snyk uses its vulnerability database to find vulnerabilities in any of the packages anywhere in the dependency tree.
In order to scan your dependencies, you must ensure you have first installed the relevant package manager and that your project contains the supported manifest files.
The way Snyk analyzes and builds the tree varies depending on the language and package manager of the project, as well as the location of your Project:
First, restore dependencies in the .NET project by running
dotnet restore and make sure that obj/project.assets.json has been created by the previous command. Then run snyk test. For more information see Getting started with the CLI.Examples of supported Project files that resolve into project.assets.json include:
- *.csproj
- *.vbproj
- *.fsproj
The project.assets.json file is required for scanning
Project files can be combined with lock files for a more deterministic project.assets.json resolution.
While there are two approaches for dependencies managed by packages.config., the following is the recommended approach because it will yield the most accurate results:
First, install the dependencies into the packages folder by running
nuget install -OutputDirectory packages and make sure the packages directory has been created by the previous command. Then run snyk test.Examples of supported project files that resolve into packages include: packages.config
While you should also be able to run
snyk test without previously installing dependencies this will result in less accurate vulnerability results.For information about the
snyk test options available for use with Nuget, see Options for Nuget projects in the Test help. For the available snyk monitor options, see Options for Nuget projects in the Monitor help.To use Paket, be sure a paket.lock file is present in combination with a paket.dependencies file. Then run
snyk testIn order to build the dependency tree, Snyk analyzes the paket.dependencies and paket.lock files.
.NET projects can be imported from any of the Git services Snyk supports.
When your Projects have been imported, Snyk analyzes your Projects based on their supported manifest files and then builds the dependency tree and displays it in the Snyk Web UI, similar to the following:
Dependency tree in Snyk Web UI
Once you select a Project for import, Snyk builds the dependency tree based on these manifest files:
- For .NET Core, the *.proj files
- For .NET Framework, the *.proj file, and packages.config
Examples of supported project files include:
- *.csproj
- *.vbproj
- *.fsproj
A .NET project can target multiple target frameworks. Snyk creates a separate dependency tree for each target framework, displaying each as a separate Snyk Project from the interface. This makes it easier to understand why a dependency is being used and also to assess the fix strategy.
No import support currently.
From the Snyk Web UI, you can configure Snyk to scan your entire Project, including the build dependencies, or skip the build dependencies.
You can also update your language preferences.
- 1.Log in to your account and navigate to the relevant Group and Organization that you want to manage.
- 2.Go to Settings and select settings for .NET. To scan all development dependencies, be sure that Scan build dependencies is checked.
For a general understanding of how Snyk helps you fix Open Source vulnerabilities within your Projects, see Fix your vulnerabilities.
If you are currently managing your Project dependencies with NuGet and leveraging
PackageReference or packages.config Snyk can automatically update the dependency version in your manifest file, provided there is an actual fix for it. You can then review and merge your fixes.In the .NET ecosystem, there are multiple levels of dependencies, some of which are obvious and some completely hidden to a developer. To correctly identify the vulnerabilities for a given .NET application, these dependencies must be resolved accurately.
Snyk resolves dependencies differently in the Snyk CLI and the Source Code Management (SCM) systems such as GitHub.
In the CLI, if you manage your Project dependencies using
PackageReference, Snyk scans your obj/project.assets.json. if you manage your dependencies using packages.config, Snyk scans the packages directory. This approach contributes to accuracy of scan results.Runtime dependencies (provided by the runtime environment also known as "meta-packages") are resolved more accurately in the CLI if the host machine uses a similar runtime SDK to the server running the app.
In an SCM integration, scanning uses a different process, as the generated files mentioned above are not available. To overcome this, Snyk follows the NuGet dependency resolution algorithm to construct a dependency tree.
- Build-time dependency: Snyk understands build-time dependency to be resolved during build time and not susceptible to change at runtime.
- Runtime dependency: Snyk understands runtime dependency to be resolved against the installed runtime, for example, packages coming from the .NET framework (<=4) / .NET runtime (for Core and .NET 5+) such as
System.Net.Http. Snyk sometimes refers to runtime dependencies as meta-packages.
There are a couple of actions you can choose to take in order to address these type of vulnerable dependencies. These vary between the SCM and the CLI.
If you believe you have found false positives because the application runs on a system that always has the latest patches from Microsoft installed, which may mean the vulnerability is no longer relevant to your Project, you may choose to ignore it.
If you believe you have found false positives because when the application runs in production you always pull the latest/explicit patches from Microsoft, which may mean the vulnerability is no longer relevant to your Project, you may ignore them and do the following:
- If in production your application always runs on the latest SDK patch version, you can set
TargetLatestRuntimePatchtotruein the Project file. Make sure to upgrade your environments (for example, dev, prod) to the latest runtime version.
<TargetLatestRuntimePatch>true</TargetLatestRuntimePatch>
- You may choose to publish a self-contained app that includes the runtime. Then set
RuntimeFrameworkVersionto the specific patch version in the Project file. You may choose to ignore vulnerabilities that you believe are no longer relevant.
<PropertyGroup>
<RuntimeFrameworkVersion>5.0.7</RuntimeFrameworkVersion>
</PropertyGroup>
<ProjectReference>elements are not currently supported.- Private dependency scanning is not supported for the SCM integration. You can scan private dependencies using the Snyk CLI.