Developer Enablement Briefing — July 10, 2024
OpenSSF releases Scorecard 5.0 with new supply-chain checks and risk signals, giving engineering leaders richer automation for project intake decisions.
Executive briefing: The Open Source Security Foundation launched Scorecard 5.0 on July 10, 2024, expanding automated supply-chain checks with new vulnerability, build provenance, and binary-artifact detections.
Key enablement signals
- New checks. Scorecard 5.0 introduces Binary-Artifacts, Vulnerabilities, and Webhooks checks alongside improved Token-Permissions scoring, enhancing insights for dependency review automation.
- Ecosystem integrations. Google’s Assured OSS, GitHub Advanced Security, and OpenSSF Package Analysis now ingest the updated scores, making it easier to enforce policies across registries.
- Risk export. The release adds OpenSSF’s new API and BigQuery dataset, enabling enterprise risk teams to query Scorecard results at scale.
Control alignment
- NIST SP 800-161r1. Use updated Scorecard signals to tier third-party packages and enforce minimum secure development practices before production use.
- SLSA 1.0. Pair Binary-Artifacts and Build Provenance findings with attestation requirements to block dependencies lacking verified build pipelines.
Detection and response priorities
- Refresh software composition analysis (SCA) pipelines to consume Scorecard 5.0 metadata and alert when dependencies fall below policy thresholds.
- Monitor for regressions where internal repositories fail new checks, guiding remediation sprints for automation tokens and webhook hygiene.
Enablement moves
- Educate maintainers on the new checks and provide templated fixes (e.g., implementing branch protection or removing binary artifacts).
- Update procurement questionnaires to request Scorecard exports from critical suppliers, standardising third-party risk reviews.
Sources
Zeph Tech embeds OpenSSF Scorecard telemetry into developer workflows so software supply-chain risk management remains continuous.