BOMs

Bills of Materials stand at the forefront of both BOMnipotents functionality and name. A BOM is a list of all components that make up a product. In the context of cybersecurity, the most prominent variant is the Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), but BOMs allow for more general considerations as well.

For BOM interactions beyond reading, you need the BOM_MANAGEMENT permission. The section about Access Management describes how it is granted.

Uploading

To upload a BOM, call:

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json

[INFO] Uploaded BOM Your Project_1.0.0

BOMnipotent expects its BOMs in the structured CycloneDX JSON format.

Consult the Syft tutorial to learn how to generate a BOM for your product.

The BOMnipotent Client will read the file at the provided path and upload its content. It can then be viewed by the consumers with appropriate permissions.

BOMs for Consumers describes how to list and download the BOMs on the server.

To add a BOM to the database, the BOMnipotent Client has to have some additional information: a name, a version, and optionally a TLP label. The identifiers name and version can either be inferred (recommended), or overwritten, as described below.

Name and Version

Inference (recommended)

BOMnipotent uses name and version to identify a BOM. It tries to infer these from the provided CycloneDX JSON fields “metadata.component.name” and “metadata.component.version”. However, according to the CycloneDX specification , the metadata.component field is optional.

If no version is specified, BOMnipotent instead uses the date of “metadata.timestamp”, if available.

To avoid any complications, it is recommended that you specify a name and version when generating the BOM, as is shown in the Syft tutorial .

Overwriting (not particularly recommended)

If for some reason your BOM lacks a name or version, or if it is incorrect, the BOMnipotent Client offers to remedy that via command line arguments:

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/dev_env_sbom.cdx.json --name-overwrite="Other Project" --version-overwrite="2.7.1"

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/dev_env_sbom.cdx.json -n "Other Project" -v "2.7.1"

[WARN] Warning: Overwriting name with 'Other Project'. The data stored on the server will differ from the provided file.
[WARN] Warning: Overwriting version with '2.7.1'. The data stored on the server will differ from the provided file.
[INFO] Uploaded BOM Other Project_2.7.1

Important: The BOMnipotent Client will in this case modify the data before sending it to the server. It does not modify the local file, as that would be overstepping. This means that your local file and the data on the server are now out-of-sync. What’s maybe worse, if you signed your BOM, your signature is now invalid.

If you do use this option, it is thus recommended that you immediately download the BOM from the server (as described in BOMs for Consumers ) and replace your local file with the result.

TLP Classification

For consumers, BOMnipotent manages access to data using the Traffic Light Protocol (TLP) . The CycloneDX Format on the other hand does not currently support document classification.

To tell BOMnipotent how to classify a document, you have two options:

1. Set a default TLP Label in the server config. This will then be used for all BOMs without further specifications.
2. Provide a tlp classification via command line argument:

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/container_sbom.cdx.json --tlp=WHITE # This makes the BOM public.

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/container_sbom.cdx.json -t WHITE # This makes the BOM public.

[INFO] Uploaded BOM Your Project Container_1.2.3

If you do neither, BOMnipotent will treat any unclassified documents as if they were labelled TLP:RED, and will log a warning every time it has to do that.

Conflict Handling

The combination of name and version of the main component of a BOM need to be unique. Trying to upload another document with the same combination results in an error.

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json

[ERROR] Received response:
409 Conflict
BOM Your Project_1.0.0 already exists in the database.

You can override this behaviour with the “on-existing” option, telling BOMnipotent to either skip or replace conflicting documents:

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json --on-existing=skip

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json -o skip

[INFO] 

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json --on-existing=replace

bomnipotent_client bom upload /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json -o replace

[INFO] Modified BOM Your Project_1.0.0.

Modifying

In the simplest case, modifying an existing BOM works very much like uploading a new one.

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json

[INFO] Modified BOM Your Project_1.0.0.

This will infer the name and version from the document, and overwrite the existing content on the server. If the data does not exist on the server, it will return a 404 Not Found error.

Modifying TLP Label

If a TLP label had previously been assigned to the BOM, a modification of the contents will not automatically alter it.

If you want to specify a new TLP label, you can do so via argument:

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json --tlp=AMBER

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json -t AMBER

[INFO] Modified BOM Your Project_1.0.0.

If the contents of the BOM have not changed and you just want to modify the TLP label, you do not need to upload the document again. Instead of providing a path to a file, you can specify name and version of the BOM you want to reclassify:

bomnipotent_client bom modify --name="Other Project" --version="2.7.1" --tlp=GREEN

bomnipotent_client bom modify -n "Other Project" -v "2.7.1" -t GREEN

[INFO] Modified BOM Other Project_2.7.1.

If you specify “none”, “default” or “unlabelled” as the TLP label, any existing classification will be removed, and the server falls back to the default TLP Label of the server config:

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json --tlp=none
bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json --tlp=default # Does the same
bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json --tlp=unlabeled # Does the same

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json -t none
bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json -t default # Does the same
bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/sbom.cdx.json -t unlabeled # Does the same

[INFO] Modified BOM Your Project_1.0.0.
[INFO] Modified BOM Your Project_1.0.0.
[INFO] Modified BOM Your Project_1.0.0.

Modifying Name or Version

If the document you are uploading has a different name or version than the data it shall modify, you need to provide that information to the BOMnipotent Client using command line arguments:

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/dev_env_sbom.cdx.json --name="Other Project" --version="2.7.1"

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/dev_env_sbom.cdx.json -n "Other Project" -v "2.7.1"

[INFO] Modified BOM Your Development Environment_1.2.3.

BOMnipotent will infer the new data from the document you provide and change the database entries accordingly.

Overwriting Name or Version (not recommended)

As with uploading, it is possible to overwrite the name and/or version stored in the local document:

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/dev_env_sbom.cdx.json --name-overwrite="Other Project" --version-overwrite="2.7.1"

Important: As with uploading, this modifies the JSON data before uploading to the server! The same caveats apply.

If the data on the server has a different name and/or version than specified in the document, you can combine the specification with an overwrite of the data:

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/dev_env_sbom.cdx.json --name="Your Development Environment" --version="1.2.3" --name-overwrite="Best Project" --version-overwrite="3.1.4"

bomnipotent_client bom modify /home/your_project/dev_env_sbom.cdx.json -n "Your Development Environment" -v "1.2.3" --name-overwrite="Best Project" --version-overwrite="3.1.4"

[WARN] Warning: Overwriting name with 'Best Project'. The data stored on the server will differ from the provided file.
[WARN] Warning: Overwriting version with '3.1.4'. The data stored on the server will differ from the provided file.
[INFO] Modified BOM Best Project_3.1.4.

Changing name and/or version without providing the complete document is not supported.

Deleting

Deleting a BOM is very straightforward:

bomnipotent_client bom delete "Best Project" "3.1.4"

[INFO] Deleted BOM Best Project_3.1.4

If the BOM does not exist, the server will return 404 Not Found. If it does exists, it is removed from the database.

All components and vulnerabilities associated with the BOM are also deleted.

Vulnerabilities

An activity at the core of supply chain security is to compare the contents of a BOM, meaning all components of a product, to databases of known vulnerabilities.

For vulnerability interactions beyond reading, you need the VULN_MANAGEMENT permission. The section about Access Management describes how it is granted.

Detecting

BOMnipotent does not itself detect new vulnerabilities. One tool that can be used in combination with BOMnipotent is grype , which takes a BOM as input and produces a list of vulnerabilities as output. The grype tutorial contains some additional information on its usage. Other tools can be used as long as they provide output in CycloneDX JSON format .

Using the BOMnipotent Client, you can directly print the contents of a BOM and pipe it to grype.

bomnipotent_client bom get "Your Project" "1.0.0" | grype --output cyclonedx-json=/home/vuln.cdx.json

bomnipotent_client bom get "Your Project" "1.0.0" | grype -o cyclonedx-json=/home/vuln.cdx.json

This will check the software components agains several databases and add the result to the CycloneDX. It then stores all that in a file called “vuln.cdx.json” (or whichever other name you provide).

Grype currently has a small known bug that makes it forget the version of the main component when it adds the vulnerabilities. This is a bit problematic because BOMnipotent needs the version to uniquely identify a product. One possible workaround is to re-add the version to the document, for example via jq '.metadata.component.version = "<VERSION>"' "vuln.cdx.json" > "vuln_with_version.cdx.json". Starting with BOMnipotent v0.3.1 you can instead directly provide the version during the vulnerability upload, as described below.

Updating

The command to update the vulnerabilities associated with a BOM is:

bomnipotent_client vulnerability update /home/your_project/vuln.cdx.json

[INFO] Updated vulnerabilities of BOM Your Project_1.0.0

The “<VULNERABILITIES>” argument needs to be a path to a file in CycloneDX JSON format.

Ideally, this file contains the name and version of the associated BOM, in which case they will automatically be read. If one of the values is missing (due to a known bug in grype, for example), you can provide it with an optional argument:

bomnipotent_client vulnerability update /home/your_project/vuln_wrong_metadata.cdx.json --name="Your Project" --version="1.0.0"

bomnipotent_client vulnerability update /home/your_project/vuln_wrong_metadata.cdx.json -n "Your Project" -v "1.0.0"

[INFO] Updated vulnerabilities of BOM Your Project_1.0.0

Vulnerabilities are meant to updated periodically. Doing so will completely replace any previous vulnerabilities associated a BOM. The uploaded CycloneDX document thus needs to contain a full list of all known vulnerabilities.

You can only update vulnerabilities for a BOM that exists on the server:

bomnipotent_client vulnerability update /home/your_project/vuln_wrong_metadata.cdx.json --name=Schlagsahne --version=2.7.1;
bomnipotent_client vulnerability update /home/your_project/vuln_wrong_metadata.cdx.json --version=1.0.1;

bomnipotent_client vulnerability update /home/your_project/vuln_wrong_metadata.cdx.json -n Schlagsahne -v 2.7.1;
bomnipotent_client vulnerability update /home/your_project/vuln_wrong_metadata.cdx.json -v 1.0.1;

[ERROR] Received response:
404 Not Found
BOM Schlagsahne_2.7.1 not found in database
[ERROR] Received response:
404 Not Found
BOM Your Project_1.0.1 not found in database

Listing

The section about listing vulnerabilities in the documentation for consumers covers most aspects of listing vulnerabilities.

One aspect not mentioned there is the “–unassessed” option. With it, BOMnipotent Client lists only those vulnerabilities that have no CSAF document associated with it.

bomnipotent_client vulnerability list --unassessed

bomnipotent_client vulnerability list -u

[INFO] 
╭──────────────┬─────────┬─────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┬───────┬──────────┬─────────┬─────────────────╮
│ Product      │ Version │ Vulnerability       │ Description                │ Score │ Severity │ TLP     │ CSAF Assessment │
├──────────────┼─────────┼─────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼───────┼──────────┼─────────┼─────────────────┤
│ Your Project │ 1.0.0   │ GHSA-qg5g-gv98-5ffh │ rustls network-reachable p │       │ medium   │ Default │                 │
│              │         │                     │ anic in `Acceptor::accept` │       │          │         │                 │
│ Your Project │ 1.1.0   │ GHSA-qg5g-gv98-5ffh │ rustls network-reachable p │       │ medium   │ Default │                 │
│              │         │                     │ anic in `Acceptor::accept` │       │          │         │                 │
╰──────────────┴─────────┴─────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┴───────┴──────────┴─────────┴─────────────────╯
[ERROR] Found 2 unassessed vulnerabilities.

In this mode, BOMnipotent Client exits with a code indicating an error if and only if there are unassessed vulnerabilites. This makes it easy to integrate this call in your periodic CI/CD.

You can freely combine this option with specifying a product name or version:

bomnipotent_client vulnerability list "Your Project" "1.0.0" --unassessed

bomnipotent_client vulnerability list "Your Project" "1.0.0" -u

error: unexpected argument 'Your Project' found

Usage: bomnipotent_client vulnerability list [OPTIONS]

For more information, try '--help'.

CSAF Documents

A Common Security Advisory Framework (CSAF) document is a vendor’s response to a newly discovered vulnerability. It is a machine-readable format to spread information on how a user of your product should react: Do they need to update to a newer version? Do they need to modify a configuration? Is your product even truly affected, or does it maybe never call the affected part of the vulnerable library?

For CSAF interactions beyond reading, you need the CSAF_MANAGEMENT permission. The sectino about Access Management describes how it is granted.

Uploading

To upload a CSAF document, call

bomnipotent_client csaf upload /home/your_project/advisory.json

[INFO] Uploaded CSAF with id "ghsa-qg5g-gv98-5ffh_advisory".

Before your CSAF document is uploaded, BOMnipotent Client checks that it is valid according to the OASIS CSAF Standard .

Conflict Handling

CSAF documents are identified by their, well, identifier, which needs to be unique. Trying to upload another document with the same id results in an error:

bomnipotent_client csaf upload /home/your_project/advisory.json

[ERROR] Received response:
409 Conflict
CSAF with id 'ghsa-qg5g-gv98-5ffh_advisory' already exists in the database.

You can override this behaviour with the “on-existing” option, telling BOMnipotent to either skip or replace conflicting documents:

bomnipotent_client csaf upload /home/your_project/advisory.json --on-existing=skip

bomnipotent_client csaf upload /home/your_project/advisory.json -o skip

[INFO] 

bomnipotent_client csaf upload /home/your_project/advisory.json --on-existing=replace

bomnipotent_client csaf upload /home/your_project/advisory.json -o replace

[INFO] Modified CSAF with id "ghsa-qg5g-gv98-5ffh_advisory".

Listing

You can view the result of the operation with

bomnipotent_client csaf list

[INFO] 
╭────────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────┬────────┬───────────╮
│ ID                         │ Title                      │ Initial Release         │ Current Release         │ Status │ TLP       │
├────────────────────────────┼────────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼─────────────────────────┼────────┼───────────┤
│ ghsa-qg5g-gv98-5ffh_adviso │ Network-reachable panic in │ 2025-01-01 10:11:12 UTC │ 2025-01-01 10:11:12 UTC │ final  │ TLP:AMBER │
│ ry                         │  Your Product              │                         │                         │        │           │
╰────────────────────────────┴────────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┴─────────────────────────┴────────┴───────────╯

All data is taken from the CSAF document.

If the document does not have the optional TLP label entry, it is treated with the default tlp configured for the server.

...┬────────┬─────────╮
...│ Status │ TLP     │
...┼────────┼─────────┤
...│ final  │ Default │
...┴────────┴─────────╯

Modifying

When the status of your document changes, if you want to reclassify it, or if new information has come to light, you may want to modify your document. To upload the new version, call:

bomnipotent_client csaf modify /home/your_project/advisory.json

[INFO] Modified CSAF with id "ghsa-qg5g-gv98-5ffh_advisory".

The command can even modify the ID of the CSAF document. Because the old ID cannot be inferred from the new document in that case, it has to be provided as an optional argument:

bomnipotent_client csaf modify <PATH/TO/CSAF> --id=<OLD-ID>

bomnipotent_client csaf modify <PATH/TO/CSAF> -i <OLD-ID>

Deleting

To delete a CSAF document from your server (which you should really only do if something went completely wrong), simply call:

bomnipotent_client csaf delete ghsa-qg5g-gv98-5ffh_advisory

[INFO] Deleted CSAF with id ghsa-qg5g-gv98-5ffh_advisory