When working on JavaScript projects, security is number one. In modern web development, using third-party dependencies is almost unavoidable but that also opens up your projects to vulnerabilities. To mitigate these risks Yarn audit is a command-line tool that helps you identify and fix vulnerabilities in your dependencies. Yarn audit is key to keeping your app secure from emerging threats.
What is Yarn Audit?
Yarn audit is a built-in security scanner that comes with the Yarn package manager. It checks your project’s dependencies for known vulnerabilities. It does this by comparing your installed packages against a security database and flags any packages with known security issues. This is a must have tool to keep your JavaScript projects safe from data breaches, code injection or remote code execution.
Yarn audit was introduced as part of Yarn’s effort to keep the JavaScript ecosystem secure. Like NPM audit, it focuses on dependencies and the risks that come with them. When it finds vulnerabilities it provides detailed information about each issue including severity and a recommended fix.
What Yarn Audit Offers
Running Yarn audit is a simple way to keep your JavaScript projects secure and reliable. Here’s what Yarn audit gives you:
- Scheduled Checks: Run Yarn audit regularly to catch security threats early.
- Trustworthy: It uses a massive vulnerability database so you get accurate and latest information.
- Actionable Results: It doesn’t just list vulnerabilities, it gives you fixes so you can fix it fast.
For more information, you can visit the official AppSoc page.
These topics will help you keep your JavaScript projects secure and up-to-date.
Common Vulnerabilities
When you run Yarn audit you may see various vulnerabilities. Here are some:
Prototype Pollution
- Description: Prototype pollution is adding or modifying properties of an object’s prototype which leads to unexpected behavior in your app.
- Risks: This can allow attackers to manipulate application objects, data corruption, security bypasses or denial of service (DoS).
Regular Expression Denial of Service (ReDoS)
- Description: ReDoS exploits the complexity of regex operations. Malicious inputs can cause significant delay.
- Risks: Attackers can consume a lot of CPU which can cause slow response or service unavailability.
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS)
- Description: XSS is injecting malicious scripts into pages viewed by others. This can happen through unsanitized inputs.
- Risks: This can lead to data theft, session hijacking and malicious redirects.
For more info on these and other vulnerabilities check out OWASP’s top ten vulnerabilities.
How does Yarn Audit work?
When you run yarn audit the tool scans the entire dependency tree of your project. It looks for vulnerable packages by matching them against known security advisories in public databases like the National Vulnerability Database (NVD). Yarn’s audit feature fetches this information to make sure your project’s dependencies are up-to-date and secure.
- Dependency Scanning: Yarn audit scans all dependencies, including direct (those you install) and transitive (those installed by other packages).
- Severity Classification: Yarn audit classifies vulnerabilities by severity: low, moderate, high, critical. This helps you to prioritize fixes based on the risk.
- Compared to NPM: Yarn audit is similar to NPM audit but is optimized for Yarn projects to make audits faster and more reliable.
Yarn Audit Glossary
To understand Yarn audit reports you need to know:
- Dependencies: Packages or modules your project depends on.
- Vulnerabilities: Weaknesses in code that can be exploited by attackers.
- Security Advisory: A report issued when a vulnerability is found in a package.
- Severity Levels: Each vulnerability is assigned a level—low, moderate, high, critical—based on the impact to your project.
These terms are important to know to understand the type of security threats your project is exposed to and the urgency to fix them.
Interpreting Yarn Audit Results
Understanding the output of a Yarn audit is key to securing your JavaScript projects. In this section we’ll go through how to read and make sense of the output.
Yarn Audit Output
When you run yarn audit the output will include:
- Advisory ID: A unique id for the vulnerability.
- Severity: The risk level (low, moderate, high, critical).
- Package: The package with the vulnerability.
- Version: The version of the package affected.
- Patched Version: The version where the vulnerability was fixed.
- More Info: A url to more information about the vulnerability.
Common Messages
- Low: Not a threat but should be fixed.
- Moderate: Should be fixed soon.
- High: High risk, fix now.
- Critical: Fix asap.
For each vulnerability the audit will recommend to update or fix the package. You can read more about this in this Smashing Magazine tutorial.
Fix Yarn Audit Vulnerabilities
Fixing Yarn audit vulnerabilities keeps your project safe. Below is a step by step guide to fix these.
Step by Step process:
Update All Dependencies:
Run the following command to update all your dependencies to latest:
Yarn upgrade
Focused Upgrades: If you don’t want to update all dependencies at once use the interactive upgrade command:
Yarn upgrade-interactive: This will let you choose which packages to update.
Specific Package Update: For specific package updates use:
yarn add [package-name]@[version]
Replace [package-name] and [version] with the actual details.
Yarn Audit Fix: Apply the automatic fix for vulnerabilities:
Note: This command will only upgrade the packages with known vulnerabilities, so it’s quick.
Manual Fixes: In some cases manual intervention is required. Refer to the detailed report and follow the instructions for the most critical fixes.
Regular Audits: Run yarn audits regularly to stay on top of new vulnerabilities.
By following these steps and using Yarn audit you’ll be able to keep your JavaScript projects safe and up-to-date.
Best Practices to Prevent Future Vulnerabilities
To keep your JavaScript projects secure in the long run regular and thorough measures are necessary. Here are some best practices to prevent future vulnerabilities:
- Keep Dependencies Up to Date: Update project dependencies to their latest stable versions. This will often fix known vulnerabilities. Use yarn upgrade and yarn upgrade-interactive to make it easier.
- Use Automated Security Tools
- Review Dependency Trees: Review your project’s dependency tree to know which packages are included and their risks.
- Limit Dependencies: Only use the necessary dependencies. Unnecessary packages increase the attack surface and thus the risk of vulnerabilities.
- Audit and Review Code: Run regular audits and code reviews. Collaborative reviews will catch potential security issues that automated tools might miss.
By following these best practices you’ll reduce the risk of vulnerabilities in your projects.
Case Studies: Yarn Audit in Real World
Yarn audit has been used to find and fix vulnerabilities in many high profile projects. Here are a few examples:
- React
- The React team uses Yarn audit to keep their widely used library secure. Before and after running audits they have found and fixed critical security issues, so millions of users are safe.
- Next.js
- Another example is the Next.js framework. By using Yarn audit systematically in their release pipelines they were able to catch vulnerabilities early and reduce the risk of security breaches.
- Gatsby
- Gatsby, a popular static site generator, also benefits from regular Yarn audits. By maintaining stringent audit practices, they have ensured the safety and reliability of their platform, enabling developers to build secure and fast websites.
These examples underscore the practical benefits of adopting Yarn audit in real-world applications.
Adopting regular Yarn audits not only helps in identifying and fixing existing vulnerabilities but also builds a solid foundation for future security.
