Better NPM Audit

The goal of this project is to provide additional features on top of the existing npm audit options. We hope to encourage more people to do security audits for their projects.

NPM version 6 and 7, and 8

NPM has upgraded to version 7 in late 2020 and has breaking changes on the npm audit. The output of npm audit has significantly changed both in the human-readable and --json output styles. Even more unfortunately, when NPM changed the JSON output in npm v7, they removed many of the other useful identifiers (cves, cwe, github_advisory_id) and the only thing left is the URL. We are trying our best to handle each version and provide consistent functionality to all of them. Related docs on v6 and v7 changes:

Docs	Link
NPM v6 & v7 changes	https://github.blog/2020-10-13-presenting-v7-0-0-of-the-npm-cli/
NPM v7 blog post	https://blog.npmjs.org/post/626173315965468672/npm-v7-series-beta-release-and-semver-major
Official NPM v6 audit docs	https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v6/commands/npm-audit
Official NPM v7 audit docs	https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v7/commands/npm-audit
Dealing with new npm audit	https://uko.codes/dealing-with-npm-v7-audit-changes

You may find the sample JSON outputs for each NPM versions in our codebase: v6, v7 & v8.

Installation

$ npm install --save better-npm-audit

or

$ npm install -g better-npm-audit

Usage

Run global

better-npm-audit audit

Run with exceptions

Unhandled or newly reported vulnerabilities will be highlighted:

Unused exceptions will be notified:

Add into package scripts

{
  "scripts": {
    "prepush": "npm run test && npm run audit",
    "audit": "better-npm-audit audit"
  }
}

Now you can run locally or in your CI pipeline:

npm run audit

Options

Flag	Short	Description
--exclude	-x	Exceptions or the vulnerabilities ID(s) to exclude; the ID can be the numeric ID, CVE, CWE or GHSA ID
--module-ignore	-m	Names of modules to exclude
--level	-l	The minimum audit level to validate; Same as the original --audit-level flag
--production	-p	Skip checking the devDependencies
--registry	-r	The npm registry url to use

Environment Variables

Variable	Description
NPM_CONFIG_AUDIT_LEVEL	Used in setting the audit level. Note: this will be disregard if the audit level flag is passed onto the command.

Using .nsprc file to manage exceptions

You may add a file .nsprc to your project root directory to manage the exceptions. For example:

{
  "1337": {
    "active": true,
    "notes": "Ignored since we don't use xxx method",
    "expiry": 1615462134681
  },
  "4501": {
    "active": false,
    "notes": "Ignored since we don't use xxx method"
  },
  "CWE-471": "CWE ID is acceptable",
  "GHSA-ww39-953v-wcq6": "GHSA ID is acceptable",
  "https://npmjs.com/advisories/1213": "Full or partial URL is acceptable too"
}

Fields

Attribute	Type	Description	Default	Examples
active	Boolean	If the tool should use it for exception	true	true
expiry	String | Number	Human-readable date, or milliseconds since the UNIX Epoch		- '2020-01-31' - '2020/01/31' - '01/31/2021, 11:03:58' - '1 March 2016 15:00' - '1 March 2016 3:00 pm' - '2012-01-26T13:51:50.417-07:00' - 'Sun, 11 Jul 2021 03:03:13 GMT' - 'Thu Jan 26 2017 11:00:00 GMT+1100 (Australian Eastern Daylight Time)' - 327611110417
notes	String	Notes related to the vulnerability.

When using a .nsprc file, a report will be displayed when it starts running:

Note: the expiry date will be styled in yellow and red color if it is detected more than one or five years ago.

Changelog

You can find the changelog here.

Contributors

Ian Wright, Edwin Taylor, Maarten Hus, Alex Burkowsky, David M. Lee, Kyle Clark, Guillermo Pincay, Grzegorz Pawłowski, CSLTech, Paul Clarkin, mgdodge, Ricky Sullivan, Sam Gregory, Tristan WAGNER, Zak

---

If you like this project,