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Java

Trivy supports four types of Java scanning: JAR/WAR/PAR/EAR, pom.xml, *gradle.lockfile and *.sbt.lock files.

Each artifact supports the following scanners:

Artifact SBOM Vulnerability License
JAR/WAR/PAR/EAR -
pom.xml
*gradle.lockfile
*.sbt.lock -

The following table provides an outline of the features Trivy offers.

Artifact Internet access Dev dependencies Dependency graph Position Detection Priority
JAR/WAR/PAR/EAR Trivy Java DB Include - - Not needed
pom.xml Maven repository 1 Exclude 7 -
*gradle.lockfile - Exclude Not needed
*.sbt.lock - Exclude - Not needed

These may be enabled or disabled depending on the target. See here for the detail.

JAR/WAR/PAR/EAR

To find information about your JAR2 file, Trivy parses pom.properties and MANIFEST.MF files in your JAR2 file and takes required properties3.

If those files don't exist or don't contain enough information - Trivy will try to find this JAR2 file in trivy-java-db. The Java DB will be automatically downloaded/updated when any JAR2 file is found. It is stored in the cache directory.

EXPERIMENTAL

Finding JARs in trivy-java-db is an experimental function.

Base JAR2 may contain inner JARs2 within itself. To find information about these JARs2, the same logic is used as for the base JAR2.

table format only contains the name of root JAR2 . To get the full path to inner JARs2 use the json format.

pom.xml

Trivy parses your pom.xml file and tries to find files with dependencies from these local locations.

  • project directory4
  • relativePath field5
  • local repository directory6.

remote repositories

If your machine doesn't have the necessary files - Trivy tries to find the information about these dependencies in the remote repositories:

Trivy reproduces Maven's repository selection and priority:

  • for snapshot artifacts:
    • check only snapshot repositories from pom files (if exists)
  • for other artifacts:
    • check release repositories from pom files (if exists)
    • check maven central

Note

Trivy only takes information about packages. We don't take a list of vulnerabilities for packages from the maven repository. Information about data sources for Java you can see here.

You can disable connecting to the maven repository with the --offline-scan flag. The --offline-scan flag does not affect the Trivy database. The vulnerability database will be downloaded anyway.

Warning

Trivy may skip some dependencies (that were not found on your local machine) when the --offline-scan flag is passed.

empty dependency version

There are cases when Trivy cannot determine the version of dependencies:

  • Unable to determine the version from the parent because the parent is not reachable;
  • The dependency uses a hard requirement with more than one version.

In these cases, Trivy uses an empty version for the dependency.

Warning

Trivy doesn't detect child dependencies for dependencies without a version.

maven-invoker-plugin

Typically, the integration tests directory (**/[src|target]/it/*/pom.xml) of maven-invoker-plugin doesn't contain actual pom.xml files and should be skipped to avoid noise.

Trivy marks dependencies from these files as the development dependencies and skip them by default. If you need to show them, use the --include-dev-deps flag.

Gradle.lock

gradle.lock files only contain information about used dependencies.

Note

All necessary files are checked locally. Gradle file scanning doesn't require internet access.

Dependency-tree

EXPERIMENTAL

This feature might change without preserving backwards compatibility.

Trivy finds child dependencies from *.pom files in the cache8 directory.

But there is no reliable way to determine direct dependencies (even using other files). Therefore, we mark all dependencies as indirect to use logic to guess direct dependencies and build a dependency tree.

Licenses

Trity also can detect licenses for dependencies.

Make sure that you have cache8 directory to find licenses from *.pom dependency files.

SBT

build.sbt.lock files only contain information about used dependencies. This requires a lockfile generated using the sbt-dependency-lock plugin.

Note

All necessary files are checked locally. SBT file scanning doesn't require internet access.


  1. Uses maven repository to get information about dependencies. Internet access required. 

  2. It means *.jar, *.war, *.par and *.ear file 

  3. ArtifactID, GroupID and Version 

  4. e.g. when parent pom.xml file has ../pom.xml path 

  5. When you use dependency path in relativePath field in pom.xml file 

  6. /Users/<username>/.m2/repository (for Linux and Mac) and C:/Users/<username>/.m2/repository (for Windows) by default 

  7. To avoid confusion, Trivy only finds locations for direct dependencies from the base pom.xml file. 

  8. The supported directories are $GRADLE_USER_HOME/caches and $HOME/.gradle/caches (%HOMEPATH%\.gradle\caches for Windows).