CircleCI

Security scanning in CircleCI workflows.

Warning Current as of writing (Vulnetix CLI v3.55.2). If a snippet no longer works, open an issue with the CLI version you are on.

Before You Start

Credentials come from Project environment variables, or a Context for sharing across projects.

Variable	Value
`VULNETIX_ORG_ID`	Organization UUID
`VULNETIX_API_KEY`	ApiKey hex digest

Environment variables authenticate on their own. Do not run vulnetix auth login on an ephemeral runner — see Authentication in CI/CD.

Quick Start

.circleci/config.yml:

version: 2.1
jobs:
  vulnetix:
    docker:
      - image: golang:1.21
    steps:
      - checkout
      - run:
          name: Install Vulnetix
          command: go install github.com/vulnetix/cli/v3@latest
      - run:
          name: Security Scan
          command: |
            vulnetix auth verify
            vulnetix scan --severity high
workflows:
  security:
    jobs:
      - vulnetix

vulnetix auth verify on the first line fails the build immediately when the credential is missing or revoked, rather than halfway through a scan.

Note Contexts can be restricted to specific security groups. Prefer them to per-project variables for a credential shared by many pipelines.

Running Individual Scans

Each subcommand runs standalone and uploads its own findings. Swap vulnetix scan for any of them:

vulnetix sca --severity high -o dist/sbom.cdx.json     # dependencies
vulnetix sast --severity high -o dist/sast.sarif       # source code
vulnetix secrets -o dist/secrets.sarif                 # hardcoded credentials
vulnetix license --allow MIT,Apache-2.0                # SPDX policy
vulnetix cbom --output-file dist/cbom.cdx.json         # cryptography, PQC posture
vulnetix aibom --output-file dist/aibom.cdx.json       # AI agents, SDKs, models

Note the flag split: the scan family takes -o <path>, while cbom, aibom, and malscan take --output-file. license takes neither. The full table is in the Subcommand Reference.

Keeping the Report

store_artifacts: { path: dist }

The SARIF-producing scans write their file only when there are findings, so a clean run leaves nothing behind. Tolerate the missing path rather than failing on it.

Quality Gates

Gates are opt-in; without a gate flag the command reports and exits 0.

vulnetix scan --severity high --block-malware --block-eol --exploits active

To surface a breach without blocking the merge: Add when: always to a following step; the failing step still fails the job.

Full gate list in the Subcommand Reference.

Uploading Third-Party Artifacts

The scans upload themselves. upload is for reports produced by other tools:

vulnetix upload --file reports/semgrep.sarif --format sarif

Accepted formats: cyclonedx, spdx, sarif, openvex, csaf_vex.