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Enable Bitbucket Cloud pull request comments

Your deployment journey

Semgrep can create pull request (PR) comments in your Bitbucket repository. These comments provide a description of the issue detected by Semgrep and may offer possible solutions. These comments are a means for security teams, or any team responsible for creating standards to help their fellow developers write safe and standards-compliant code.

Automated comments on Bitbucket pull requests are displayed as follows:

Semgrep Bitbucket PR comment Figure An inline Bitbucket pull request comment.

Conditions for PR comment creation​

PR comments appear for the following types of scans under these conditions:

Type of scanProduct nameTrigger conditionHow to set up
Static application security testing (SAST)Semgrep CodeA comment appears when a finding is generated by a rule in Comment or Block mode. This means you can fully customize what comments your developers receive.Complete the steps in the following sections:
  1. Confirm your Semgrep account's connection and access to your source code manager.
  2. Configure comments for Semgrep Code.
Software composition analysis (SCA)Semgrep Supply Chain (SSC)A comment appears based on the conditions you explicitly set in a Supply Chain policy or when Semgrep detects a license violation.To receive Supply Chain comments, complete the steps in Confirm account connection and access and set up a policy.

To receive license violation comments, enable dependency search.
SecretsSemgrep SecretsA comment appears when a finding is generated by a rule in Comment or Block mode. A comment also appears for invalid findings and validation errors if these conditions are set to Comment or Block mode.Complete the steps in the following sections:
  1. Confirm your Semgrep account's connection and access to your source code manager.
  2. Configure comments for Semgrep Secrets.

Comments from Supply Chain scans include the following information:

Risk
A description of the vulnerability, including the types of attack it is vulnerable to.
Fix
Indicates what versions to upgrade to, if any, that resolves or eliminates the vulnerability.
Reference
A link to additional information about the vulnerability from its source, such as the GitHub Advisory Database and the National Vulnerability Database (NVD), if available.

Supported Bitbucket plans​

  • Any of the following Bitbucket plans are supported:
    • Cloud Free
    • Standard
    • Premium

There are two ways in which you can integrate Semgrep comments into Bitbucket depending on the Bitbucket plan you use:

  • Workspace access token: If you use the Bitbucket Cloud Premium plan, you can create a workspace access token. This option saves time because you can create one access token for all repositories in the workspace. With one workspace access token, you can bulk-onboard more repositories at once from a whole workspace. However, you can also use the option of a repository access token to onboard repositories one by one.
  • Repository access token: If you do not have the Bitbucket Cloud Premium plan, create a separate repository access token for each repository where you want to use Semgrep. This configuration option is also useful if you have the Bitbucket Cloud Premium plan, but prefer to onboard repositories one by one instead of bulk onboarding.

Create and add a workspace access token​

Prerequisite
  • Bitbucket Cloud Premium plan. If you do not have a Bitbucket Cloud Premium plan, create a repository access token.

Create a workspace access token in Bitbucket (only available if you have a Bitbucket Cloud Premium plan):

  1. Create a workspace access token in Bitbucket with Read and Write permissions for the Pull requests scope. Follow the instructions in Create a workspace Access Token in Bitbucket documentation.
  2. Add the workspace access token as a workspace variable with the Secured option.

Continue setting up Bitbucket PR comments by finishing the rest of this guide.

Enable PR comments in Bitbucket​

Prerequisites​

  • In addition to finishing the previous steps in your deployment journey, it is recommended to have completed a full scan on your default branch for the repository in which you want to receive comments.
  • You must have a Bitbucket Cloud workspace access token or a repository access token.

Confirm your Semgrep account's connection​

Confirm that you have the correct connection and access:

  1. In your Semgrep AppSec Platform account, click Settings > Source code managers.
  2. Check that an entry for your Bitbucket workspace exists and is correct.

Define the BITBUCKET_TOKEN environment variable​

To enable PR comments, define the BITBUCKET_TOKEN environment variable in your CI configuration file. Its syntax and placement in your CI configuration file depends on your CI provider. For example, in Bitbucket Pipelines, its syntax is the following:

- export BITBUCKET_TOKEN=$PAT

The following snippet is a sample with BITBUCKET_TOKEN defined in a bitbucket-pipelines.yml file:

image: atlassian/default-image:latest

pipelines:
  branches:
    main:
      # ...
  pull-requests:
    '**':
      - step:
          name: 'Run Semgrep diff scan with PR branch'
          image: semgrep/semgrep
          script:
            # ...
            - export BITBUCKET_TOKEN=$PAT

Configure comments for Semgrep Code​

In addition to setting up the connection between Semgrep and Bitbucket, you must assign rules to Comment or Block mode. This customization enables you to:
  • Manage the amount of PR comments your developers receive.
  • Ensure that only rules that meet your criteria, such as high severity or high confidence rules, produce comments visible to developers, reducing noise.

Set rules to Comment or Block mode​

The following instructions let you customize what findings or security issues your developers see as comments in their PRs:

  1. In your Semgrep AppSec Platform account, click Rules > Policies to enter the Policies page. Under Modes , you can quickly see if you have existing rules in either Comment or Block mode.
  2. Optional: To configure Semgrep Secrets rules, click the Secrets tab.
  3. Optional: Use the filters to quickly find rules to set to Comment or Block.
  4. Click the checkbox of the rules you want to set. You can use Ctrl + Click to select rules in bulk.
  5. Click Change modes.
  6. Click either Block or Comment.

You have successfully configured PR comments for Semgrep Code.
tip

Rules in Block mode fail the CI job that runs on the PR. Depending on your workflow, this may prevent your PR from merging.

Configure comments for Semgrep Secrets​

In addition to setting up the connection between Semgrep and Bitbucket, you must assign rules to Comment or Block mode. This customization enables you to:
  • Manage the amount of PR comments your developers receive.
  • Ensure that only rules that meet your criteria, such as high severity or high confidence rules, and result in findings involving valid secrets produce comments visible to developers, reducing noise.

Set rules to Comment or Block mode​

The following instructions let you customize what findings or security issues your developers see as comments in their PRs:

  1. In Semgrep AppSec Platform, go to Rules > Policies > Secrets.
  2. Under Modes , you can see if you have existing rules in either Comment or Block mode. You can also use the filters to find rules you want to set to Comment or Block.
  3. Click the checkbox of the rules you want to set. You can use Ctrl + Click to select rules in bulk.
  4. Click Change modes.
  5. Click either Block or Comment.

You have successfully configured PR comments for Semgrep Secrets.

Validation state policies​

Validation state policies allow you to define how Semgrep handles the following issues:

  • Invalid findings: the secret has been revoked, was never functional, or used for a custom or private endpoint that Semgrep can't communicate with. For example, a Semgrep rule that tests GitHub credentials may return an invalid finding if Semgrep can't communicate with an on-premise deployment.
  • Validation errors: Semgrep was unable to reach the secrets provider to test the validity of the credential, or Semgrep received an unexpected response from the API

To edit the policy for invalid secrets and errors:

  1. In Semgrep AppSec Platform, go to Rules > Policies > Secrets.
  2. Click Validation State Policies.
  3. Choose the mode, either Comment or Block, that you want Semgrep to set for Invalid findings.
  4. Choose the mode, either Comment or Block, that you want Semgrep to set for Validation errors.
tip

Rules in Block mode fail the CI job that runs on the PR. Depending on your workflow, this may prevent your PR from merging.

Configure comments for Semgrep Supply Chain​

To configure comments for Supply Chain, you must define a Supply Chain policy. This policy lets you set the specific conditions, such as transitivity and reachability, that trigger a comment. These conditions are unique to Supply Chain findings.

See the Policies documentation for more information.

Receive comments in your VPN or on-premise SCM​

Bitbucket Premium provides access control features for content that your individual account owns. If you use this feature, you need to add several IP addresses into your allowlist.

If you are behind a firewall, are using a virtual private network (VPN), or have network restrictions regarding access, you may need to add the following IP addresses to the ingress allowlist and egress allowlist:

# Ingress IP addresses (from Semgrep to your infrastructure)
# and egress IP addresses (from your infrastructure to Semgrep)
35.166.231.235
52.35.248.246
52.34.137.110
44.225.64.41

Additional egress IP addresses​

You must also add CloudFront IP addresses to your egress allowlist. Refer to Locations and IP address ranges of CloudFront edge servers for a list of IP addresses.

Test your configuration​

Test that you are able to receive findings by manually triggering a scan through your CI provider.

Receiving PR or MR comments may require additional steps depending on the custom configuration of your VPN or SCM (for example, if you use a static IP without a hostname). Reach out to Semgrep Support with any concerns.

info

Only rules set to the Comment and Block rule modes in the Policies page create PR comments.

Customize PR comments​

You can customize the comments Semgrep leaves on your PR. Custom comments allow you to direct your teams to the resources they need to handle the vulnerabilities Semgrep identifies in their code.

A custom comment with instructions on how to obtain more information about a finding. Figure. A custom comment with instructions on how to obtain more information about a finding.

To provide custom PR comments:

  1. Sign in to Semgrep AppSec Platform.
  2. Navigate to Settings > General > Global.
  3. Go to the Custom PR/MR comments footers section. Custom comment configuration in Semgrep AppSec Platform Figure. Custom comment configuration in Semgrep AppSec Platform.
  4. Provide a custom comment for each Semgrep product whose findings you want to generate a PR comment. Semgrep supports Markdown and plaintext links in your message.
  5. Click Save changes.

Next steps​

You've finished setting up a core deployment of Semgrep 🎉.

Additional references​

Not finding what you need in this doc? Ask questions in our Community Slack group, or see Support for other ways to get help.