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OSV-Scanner is Google's dependency scanner, announced in 2022, that queries the open OSV.dev database rather than raw CVE advisories. Because OSV pins each vulnerability to precise commit or semantic version ranges, matching against your actual dependencies becomes deterministic and produces far less noise. It reads npm, Python, Go, Ruby, PHP, Rust and Maven manifests.
VEX, the Vulnerability Exploitability eXchange, is a structured way for a vendor to state whether a CVE listed in an SBOM actually affects a product. Log4Shell in December 2021 showed why it exists: countless Java applications carried that critical CVE while never loading the vulnerable class. VEX marks which vulnerabilities are not exploitable, so scanner noise becomes signal.
SLSA v1.0 splits software supply-chain security into three tracks (Build, Source, and Dependencies), of which only Build is stabilized, with three levels: L1, L2, and L3. If you build in GitHub Actions, reaching L2 with Sigstore-signed provenance takes a few hours and is the starting point I recommend to any team.
Trivy and Grype have spent years competing to be the default container scanner. Trivy broadened its scope to IaC, Kubernetes, and Git repos in one binary; Grype specialised in SBOM precision and lower false-positive rates. After a year of intensive CI use with real images, here is a side-by-side breakdown of where each one wins.
Docker Scout continuously scans container images against CVE databases including NVD and ecosystem-specific advisories, and recommends base-image changes to remove vulnerabilities. Built into Docker Desktop and Hub, it competes with Trivy, Grype and Snyk. Best fit for teams already running end-to-end on the Docker ecosystem.
Chainguard Images are minimal Docker containers from the company behind Sigstore, with zero known CVEs, Cosign-signed SBOMs and daily rebuilds on top of Wolfi, its own glibc-based distribution. They pay off over official images when strict compliance, supply chain audits or sensitive production workloads are at stake.
In 2023, software supply chains became attackers' favourite target: MOVEit exposed data from hundreds of organisations through a zero-day flaw, 3CX shipped a trojanised installer to millions of users, and npm and PyPI kept receiving malicious typosquatted packages. The practical defence combines SBOM, artefact signing with Sigstore, SLSA maturity levels, and continuous dependency scanning.
