Integration of the Static Analysis Results Interchange Format in CogniCrypt
This work addresses integration challenges for software developers using multiple static analysis tools, but it is incremental as it applies an existing standard to a specific tool.
The paper tackles the problem of incompatible reporting formats among static analysis tools by integrating the Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF) into CogniCrypt, resulting in a proof-of-concept connector that enables CogniCrypt to generate and export results in SARIF format.
Background - Software companies increasingly rely on static analysis tools to detect potential bugs and security vulnerabilities in their software products. In the past decade, more and more commercial and open-source static analysis tools have been developed and are maintained. Each tool comes with its own reporting format, preventing an easy integration of multiple analysis tools in a single interface, such as the Static Analysis Server Protocol (SASP). In 2017, a collaborative effort in industry, including Microsoft and GrammaTech, has proposed the Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF) to address this issue. SARIF is a standardized format in which static analysis warnings can be encoded, to allow the import and export of analysis reports between different tools. Purpose - This paper explains the SARIF format through examples and presents a proof of concept of the connector that allows the static analysis tool CogniCrypt to generate and export its results in SARIF format. Design/Approach - We conduct a cross-sectional study between the SARIF format and CogniCrypt's output format before detailing the implementation of the connector. The study aims to find the components of interest in CogniCrypt that the SARIF export module can complete. Originality/Value - The integration of SARIF into CogniCrypt described in this paper can be reused to integrate SARIF into other static analysis tools. Conclusion - After detailing the SARIF format, we present an initial implementation to integrate SARIF into CogniCrypt. After taking advantage of all the features provided by SARIF, CogniCrypt will be able to support SASP.