grype

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A vulnerability scanner for container images and filesystems

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Grype

Grype is a vulnerability scanner for container images and filesystems developed by Anchore. It easily finds vulnerabilities for major operating system packages and language-specific packages.

Key Features

- Scans container images, filesystems, and SBOMs for known vulnerabilities
- Supports major Linux distributions (Alpine, Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL, CentOS, etc.)
- Language support for Java, JavaScript, Python, Go, Ruby, Rust, .NET, PHP, and more
- Works with Docker, OCI, and Singularity image formats
- Integrates with Syft for SBOM generation
- Supports VEX (Vulnerability Exploitability Exchange) for filtering results
- Risk scoring with EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) and CVSS metrics

Architecture

- Written in Go
- Uses SQLite for vulnerability database storage
- Modular matcher system for different package types and ecosystems
- Automatic database updates from multiple vulnerability sources
- CLI-first design with multiple output formats (table, JSON, SARIF, CycloneDX)

Main Components

- cmd/grype/ - CLI application entry point
- grype/ - Core library with matchers, database, and scanning logic
- grype/matcher/ - Package-specific vulnerability matchers
- grype/db/ - Database management and vulnerability storage
- grype/pkg/ - Package identification and metadata
- grype/presenter/ - Output formatting (JSON, table, SARIF, etc.)

Usage

Basic vulnerability scan:

bash
grype <image>

Scan with SBOM:

bash
grype sbom:./sbom.json

The tool automatically manages its vulnerability database and provides configurable output formats and filtering options.