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Security approval in merge requests MVC

Summary

In order to allow teams to focus on the most critical security items and avoid things being lost due to volume of results, GitLab now allows customers to automatically approve specifically identified merge requests if there are no vulnerabilities introduced of a specified severity. This will enable a workflow that would allow Security teams to be involved in Merge Request Approval workflow without having to approve every single Merge Request.

Problem to solve

Security checks are performed during the pipeline execution, and reports are available in the merge request widget. GitLab is able to determine if new vulnerabilities have been introduced into the code because of the specific changes of the feature branch.

Our security paradigm states that we don't want to make a pipeline fail and block the entire development process if some vulnerability is found. They could be false positive, or just something that is not more important than the development velocity.

On the other side, we're getting a lot of feedback that unsecure code should not be allowed unless previously approved by the security team. This is considered a strict requirement by some customer, and also a must-have by analysts. Security teams don't want to be involved in each and every merge request, but only if security flaws have been found.

GitLab recently added the feature of Merge Request Approval rules (including adding multiple approval rules) that would enable approval being required by specific individuals on a merge request. The pain point is that in practice, a Security Team would have to review every single merge request, and what they are interested in doing is setting a threshold for when a review is required.

We strongly believe that our security paradigm is valid, but we should consider something that allows companies to deal with their compliance requirements and ensure they are able to use GitLab.

Target audience

Proposal

We recently released multiple approval rules, and we can leverage this feature to build some advanced logic on top of it.

We can use multiple merge request approval rules to create an MVC that auto-approves specifically identified Approvals if there are no vulnerabilities introduced of a certain severity. This will enable a workflow that would allow Security teams to be involved in Merge Request Approval without having to approve every single Merge Request.

Proposed solution

  • Default to displaying a Vulnerability-Check Merge Request Approval rule with no Approvers added with a tool-tip to point you to documentation on what the Merge Request Approval rule provides
  • Administrators can update the number of Approvals required to activate the rule and add appropriate approvers using the standard Merge Request approval rule UI
  • Merge requests themselves utilize existing approval rules UI
  • The removing of the required approval is performed by lowering the approvals_required to zero for the Vulnerability-Check approval rule when no Critical, High, or Unknown vulnerabilities are introduced
  • Vulnerability Dismissal does not affect whether approvals_required is adjusted to zero
  • Usage ping with total number of projects with a Vulnerability-Check project rule that exists with an approval count greater than 0

This avoids the confusing "Double Set of Approvers" or "Special Approvers" that was mentioned in the discovery.

Out of Scope
  • Compliance focused reporting on merge approvals
  • Selection Vulnerability Severity level
  • Adding auto-approval to non-standard (in this case Vulnerability-Check) Approvals
Additional documentation

We should be careful to communicate to users that one Merge request approvals section checkbox might lead to unexpected behavior in this workflow. Allowing users to adjust Approvals in specific Merge Requests could enable un-authorized adjustment to approvers to subvert the workflow.

User Interface

1. Vulnerability-Check approver group rule seen by default in approver menu 1

2. User opened the Vulnerability-Check group (clicked "edit"), adjusts to 1+ required approvers to activate and selects eligible approvers (name input with Vulnerability-Check disabled) 2

3. Vulnerability-Check is active, ? on hover displays tooltip explaining the explicit rule 3

Development Log

Status

Decisions

Documentation

Edited by Philippe Lafoucrière