Scout: Security Analysis Tool - Github action

Scout is an extensible open-source tool intended to assist ink!, Soroban and Substrate developers and auditors detect common security issues and deviations from best practices.

How to integrate with Github Actions

Create .github/workflows/scout.yml:

name: Scout-actions
on: [push]
jobs:
  analyze:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
      - uses: coinfabrik/scout-actions@v3
        with:
          working_directory: "."
          verbose: false
          fail_on_error: true
          comment_pr: false
          github_token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          scout_extra_args: ""

YML Description

• name: Scout-actions: This is the name of the GitHub Action which will be viewed on the GitHub Actions dashboard.
• on: [push]: This line specifies the event that will trigger the action. In this case, the GitHub Action fires whenever a push is made to the repository.
• jobs: GitHub Actions can contain several jobs. In this case, only one job named analyze has been set up.
• analyze: This is the name of the job.
• runs-on: ubuntu-latest: This specifies the runtime environment for the job. Here, the job will run on the latest available Ubuntu version.
• steps: This is a list of tasks to be carried out in the job.
• uses: actions/checkout@v4: The first task uses a GitHub Action called 'checkout@v4'. This is a predefined Action that allows GitHub Actions to work with a copy of your repository.
• uses: coinfabrik/scout-actions@v3: The second task uses the GitHub Action 'scout-actions@v3'.

Options

Key	Description	Required	Default
working_directory	Directory containing the Cargo.toml file to analyze. Examples: ".", "./my-project", "packages/rust-project"	No	"."
verbose	Enable verbose output for detailed analysis information	No	false
fail_on_error	Controls whether the action should fail if Scout finds security issues	No	true
comment_pr	Automatically comment analysis results on the PR	No	false
github_token	GitHub token for PR commenting functionality. Required when comment_pr is true	No	-
scout_extra_args	Additional arguments to pass to Scout CLI. Example: "--exclude [DETECTOR_NAME]"	No	""

Detectors

Refer to Scout's documentation site for a full list of the detectors for Ink, Soroban and Substrate.

Acknowledgements

Scout is an open source vulnerability analyzer developed by CoinFabrik's Research and Development team.

We received support through grants from the Web3 Foundation Grants Program, the Aleph Zero Ecosystem Funding Program and the Stellar Community Fund.

Grant Program	Description
	Proof of Concept: We collaborated with the Laboratory on Foundations and Tools for Software Engineering (LaFHIS) at the University of Buenos Aires to establish analysis techniques and tools for our detectors, as well as to create an initial list of vulnerability classes and code examples. View Grant | Application Form. Prototype: We built a functioning prototype using linting detectors built with Dylint and expanded the list of vulnerability classes, detectors, and test cases. View Prototype | Application Form.
	We improved the precision and number of detectors for the tool with a multi-phase approach. This included a manual vulnerability analysis of projects within the Aleph Zero ecosystem, comprehensive testing of the tool on leading projects, and refining its detection accuracy.
	We added support for Stellar's smart contract language, Soroban. We included various output formats, such as an HTML report, improved the tool's precision and recall, and added a GitHub action to run the tool with pull requests.
	We added support for Substrate pallets in all of Scout's features: CLI, VS Code extension and GitHub Action.

About CoinFabrik

We - CoinFabrik - are a research and development company specialized in Web3, with a strong background in cybersecurity. Founded in 2014, we have worked on over 180 blockchain-related projects, EVM based and also for Solana, Algorand, Stellar and Polkadot. Beyond development, we offer security audits through a dedicated in-house team of senior cybersecurity professionals, currently working on code in Substrate, Solidity, Clarity, Rust, TEAL and Stellar Soroban.

Our team has an academic background in computer science and mathematics, with work experience focused on cybersecurity and software development, including academic publications, patents turned into products, and conference presentations. Furthermore, we have an ongoing collaboration on knowledge transfer and open-source projects with the University of Buenos Aires.

License

Scout is licensed and distributed under a MIT license. Contact us if you're looking for an exception to the terms.