• What Is Scorecard?
• Prominent Scorecard Users
• View a Project's Score
• Scorecard's Public Data

• Scorecard GitHub Action
• Scorecard REST API
• Scorecard Badges
• Scorecard Command Line Interface
  • Prerequisites
  • Installation
  • Authentication
  • Basic Usage

• Default Scorecard Checks
• Detailed Check Documentation (Scoring Criteria, Risks, and Remediation)
• Beginner's Guide to Scorecard Checks

• Two-factor Authentication (2FA)

• Aggregate Score

• Report Problems
• Code of Conduct
• Contribute to Scorecard
• Add a New Check
• Connect with the Scorecard Community
• Report a Security Issue

• FAQ

We created Scorecard to help open source maintainers improve their security best practices and to help open source consumers judge whether their dependencies are safe.

Scorecard is an automated tool that assesses a number of important heuristics ("checks") associated with software security and assigns each check a score of 0-10. You can use these scores to understand specific areas to improve in order to strengthen the security posture of your project. You can also assess the risks that dependencies introduce, and make informed decisions about accepting these risks, evaluating alternative solutions, or working with the maintainers to make improvements.

The inspiration for Scorecard’s logo: "You passed! All D's ... and an A!"

1. Automate analysis and trust decisions on the security posture of open source projects.

2. Use this data to proactively improve the security posture of the critical projects the world depends on.

3. Act as a measurement tool for existing policies

   If OSS consumers require certain behaviors from their dependencies, Scorecard can be used to measure those. With the V5 release, we see Structured Results as a way of doing this if there is a supported analysis. Instead of relying on an aggregate score of X/10, or a Maintained score of Y/10, an OSS consumer may want to ensure the repo they're depending on isn't archived (which is covered by the archived probe). The OpenSSF takes this approach with its own Security Baseline for projects.

1. To be a definitive report or requirement that all projects should follow.

   Scorecard is not intended to be a one-size-fits-all solution. Every step of making our results is opinionated: what checks get included or excluded, the importance of each check, and how scores are calculated. The checks themselves are heuristics; there are false positives and false negatives.

   Whether it’s due to applicability, or feasibility, or a matter of opinion, what's included or excluded from Scorecard results leads to a lot of discussion. It’s impossible to create a Scorecard that satisfies everyone because different audiences will care about different subsets of behavior.

   Aggregate scores in particular tells you nothing about what individual behaviors a repository is or is not doing. Many check scores are aggregated into a single score, and there’s multiple ways of arriving at the same score. These scores change as we add new heuristics or refine the existing ones.

Scorecard has been run on thousands of projects to monitor and track security metrics. Prominent projects that use Scorecard include:

• Tensorflow
• Angular
• Flutter
• sos.dev
• deps.dev

To see scores for projects regularly scanned by Scorecard, navigate to the webviewer. You can also replace the placeholder text (platform, user/org, and repository name) in the following template link to generate a custom Scorecard link for a repo: https://scorecard.dev/viewer/?uri=<github_or_gitlab>.com/<user_name_or_org>/<repository_name>

For example:

• https://scorecard.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/ossf/scorecard
• https://scorecard.dev/viewer/?uri=gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroidclient

To view scores for projects not included in the webviewer, use the Scorecard CLI.

We run a weekly Scorecard scan of the 1 million most critical open source projects judged by their direct dependencies and publish the results in a BigQuery public dataset.

This data is available in the public BigQuery dataset openssf:scorecardcron.scorecard-v2. The latest results are available in the BigQuery view openssf:scorecardcron.scorecard-v2_latest.

You can query the data using BigQuery Explorer by navigating to Add Data > Star a project by name > 'openssf'. For example, you may be interested in how a project's score has changed over time:

SELECT date, score FROM `openssf.scorecardcron.scorecard-v2` WHERE repo.name="github.com/ossf/scorecard" ORDER BY date ASC

You can extract the latest results to Google Cloud storage in JSON format using the bq tool:

# Get the latest PARTITION_ID
bq query --nouse_legacy_sql 'SELECT partition_id FROM
openssf.scorecardcron.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.PARTITIONS WHERE table_name="scorecard-v2"
AND partition_id!="__NULL__" ORDER BY partition_id DESC
LIMIT 1'

# Extract to GCS
bq extract --destination_format=NEWLINE_DELIMITED_JSON
'openssf:scorecardcron.scorecard-v2$<partition_id>' gs://bucket-name/filename-*.json

The list of projects that are checked is available in the cron/internal/data/projects.csv file in this repository. If you would like us to track more, please feel free to send a Pull Request with others. Currently, this list is derived from projects hosted on GitHub ONLY. We do plan to expand them in near future to account for projects hosted on other source control systems.

The easiest way to use Scorecard on GitHub projects you own is with the Scorecard GitHub Action. The Action runs on any repository change and issues alerts that maintainers can view in the repository’s Security tab. For more information, see the Scorecard GitHub Action installation instructions.

To query pre-calculated scores of OSS projects, use the REST API.

To enable your project to be available on the REST API, set publish_results: true in the Scorecard GitHub Action setting.

Data provided by the REST API is licensed under the CDLA Permissive 2.0.

Enabling publish_results: true in Scorecard GitHub Actions also allows maintainers to display a Scorecard badge on their repository to show off their hard work. This badge also auto-updates for every change made to the repository. See more details on this OSSF blogpost.

To include a badge on your project's repository, simply add the following markdown to your README:

[![OpenSSF Scorecard](https://api.scorecard.dev/projects/github.com/{owner}/{repo}/badge)](https://scorecard.dev/viewer/?uri=github.com/{owner}/{repo})

To run a Scorecard scan on projects you do not own, use the command line interface installation option.

Platforms: Currently, Scorecard supports OSX and Linux platforms. If you are using a Windows OS you may experience issues. Contributions towards supporting Windows are welcome.

Language: You must have GoLang installed to run Scorecard (https://golang.org/doc/install)

scorecard is available as a Docker container:

docker pull gcr.io/openssf/scorecard:stable

To use a specific scorecard version (e.g., v3.2.1), run:

docker pull gcr.io/openssf/scorecard:v3.2.1

To install Scorecard as a standalone:

Visit our latest release page and download the correct zip file for your operating system.

Add the binary to your GOPATH/bin directory (use go env GOPATH to identify your directory if necessary).

We generate SLSA3 signatures using the OpenSSF's slsa-framework/slsa-github-generator during the release process. To verify a release binary:

1. Install the verification tool from slsa-framework/slsa-verifier#installation.
2. Download the signature file attestation.intoto.jsonl from the GitHub releases page.
3. Run the verifier:

slsa-verifier -artifact-path <the-zip> -provenance attestation.intoto.jsonl -source github.com/ossf/scorecard -tag <the-tag>

GitHub imposes api rate limits on unauthenticated requests. To avoid these limits, you must authenticate your requests before running Scorecard. There are two ways to authenticate your requests: either create a GitHub personal access token, or create a GitHub App Installation.

• Create a classic GitHub personal access token. When creating the personal access token, we suggest you choose the public_repo scope. Set the token in an environment variable called GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN, GITHUB_TOKEN, GH_AUTH_TOKEN or GH_TOKEN using the commands below according to your platform.

# For posix platforms, e.g. linux, mac:
export GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=<your access token>
# Multiple tokens can be provided separated by comma to be utilized
# in a round robin fashion.
export GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=<your access token1>,<your access token2>

# For windows:
set GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=<your access token>
set GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=<your access token1>,<your access token2>

OR

• Create a GitHub App Installation for higher rate-limit quotas. If you have an installed GitHub App and key file, you can use the three environment variables below, following the commands (set or export) shown above for your platform.

GITHUB_APP_KEY_PATH=<path to the key file on disk>
GITHUB_APP_INSTALLATION_ID=<installation id>
GITHUB_APP_ID=<app id>

These variables can be obtained from the GitHub developer settings page.

Scorecard can run using just one argument, the URL of the target repo:

$ scorecard --repo=github.com/ossf-tests/scorecard-check-branch-protection-e2e
Starting [CII-Best-Practices]
Starting [Fuzzing]
Starting [Pinned-Dependencies]
Starting [CI-Tests]
Starting [Maintained]
Starting [Packaging]
Starting [SAST]
Starting [Dependency-Update-Tool]
Starting [Token-Permissions]
Starting [Security-Policy]
Starting [Signed-Releases]
Starting [Binary-Artifacts]
Starting [Branch-Protection]
Starting [Code-Review]
Starting [Contributors]
Starting [Vulnerabilities]
Finished [CI-Tests]
Finished [Maintained]
Finished [Packaging]
Finished [SAST]
Finished [Signed-Releases]
Finished [Binary-Artifacts]
Finished [Branch-Protection]
Finished [Code-Review]
Finished [Contributors]
Finished [Dependency-Update-Tool]
Finished [Token-Permissions]
Finished [Security-Policy]
Finished [Vulnerabilities]
Finished [CII-Best-Practices]
Finished [Fuzzing]
Finished [Pinned-Dependencies]

RESULTS
-------
Aggregate score: 7.9 / 10

Check scores:
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|  SCORE  |          NAME          |             REASON             |                         DOCUMENTATION/REMEDIATION                         |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 10 / 10 | Binary-Artifacts       | no binaries found in the repo  | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#binary-artifacts       |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 9 / 10  | Branch-Protection      | branch protection is not       | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#branch-protection      |
|         |                        | maximal on development and all |                                                                           |
|         |                        | release branches               |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| ?       | CI-Tests               | no pull request found          | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#ci-tests               |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 / 10  | CII-Best-Practices     | no badge found                 | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#cii-best-practices     |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 10 / 10 | Code-Review            | branch protection for default  | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#code-review            |
|         |                        | branch is enabled              |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 / 10  | Contributors           | 0 different companies found -- | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#contributors           |
|         |                        | score normalized to 0          |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 / 10  | Dependency-Update-Tool | no update tool detected        | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#dependency-update-tool |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 / 10  | Fuzzing                | project is not fuzzed in       | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#fuzzing                |
|         |                        | OSS-Fuzz                       |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 1 / 10  | Maintained             | 2 commit(s) found in the last  | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#maintained             |
|         |                        | 90 days -- score normalized to |                                                                           |
|         |                        | 1                              |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| ?       | Packaging              | no published package detected  | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#packaging              |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 8 / 10  | Pinned-Dependencies    | unpinned dependencies detected | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#pinned-dependencies    |
|         |                        | -- score normalized to 8       |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 / 10  | SAST                   | no SAST tool detected          | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#sast                   |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 / 10  | Security-Policy        | security policy file not       | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#security-policy        |
|         |                        | detected                       |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| ?       | Signed-Releases        | no releases found              | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#signed-releases        |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 10 / 10 | Token-Permissions      | tokens are read-only in GitHub | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#token-permissions      |
|         |                        | workflows                      |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 10 / 10 | Vulnerabilities        | no vulnerabilities detected    | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#vulnerabilities        |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|

The GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN has to be set to a valid token

docker run -e GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=token gcr.io/openssf/scorecard:stable --show-details --repo=https://github.com/ossf/scorecard

To use a specific scorecard version (e.g., v3.2.1), run:

docker run -e GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=token gcr.io/openssf/scorecard:v3.2.1 --show-details --repo=https://github.com/ossf/scorecard

For more details about why a check fails, use the --show-details option:

./scorecard --repo=github.com/ossf-tests/scorecard-check-branch-protection-e2e --checks Branch-Protection --show-details
Starting [Pinned-Dependencies]
Finished [Pinned-Dependencies]

RESULTS
-------
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|  SCORE  |          NAME          |             REASON             |            DETAILS             |                         DOCUMENTATION/REMEDIATION                         |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| 9 / 10  | Branch-Protection      | branch protection is not       | Info: 'force pushes' disabled  | github.com/ossf/scorecard/blob/main/docs/checks.md#branch-protection      |
|         |                        | maximal on development and all | on branch 'main' Info: 'allow  |                                                                           |
|         |                        | release branches               | deletion' disabled on branch   |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | 'main' Info: linear history    |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | enabled on branch 'main' Info: |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | strict status check enabled    |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | on branch 'main' Warn: status  |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | checks for merging have no     |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | specific status to check on    |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | branch 'main' Info: number     |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | of required reviewers is 2     |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | on branch 'main' Info: Stale   |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | review dismissal enabled on    |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | branch 'main' Info: Owner      |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | review required on branch      |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | 'main' Info: 'administrator'   |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | PRs need reviews before being  |                                                                           |
|         |                        |                                | merged on branch 'main'        |                                                                           |
|---------|------------------------|--------------------------------|--------------------------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------------|

Maintainer Annotations let maintainers add context to display alongside Scorecard check results. Annotations can provide users additional information when Scorecard has an incomplete assessment of a project's security practices. To see the maintainers annotations for each check, use the --show-annotations option.

For more information on available annotations or how to make annotations, see the configuration doc.

To run Scorecard on a GitLab repository, you must create a GitLab Access Token with the following permissions:

• read_api
• read_user
• read_repository

You can run Scorecard on a GitLab repository by setting the GITLAB_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable:

export GITLAB_AUTH_TOKEN=glpat-xxxx

scorecard --repo gitlab.com/<org>/<project>/<subproject>

For an example of using Scorecard in GitLab CI/CD, see here.

While we focus on GitLab.com support, Scorecard also works with self-hosted GitLab installations. If your platform is hosted at a subdomain (e.g. gitlab.foo.com), Scorecard should work out of the box. If your platform is hosted at some slug (e.g. foo.com/bar/), you will need to set the GL_HOST environment variable.

export GITLAB_AUTH_TOKEN=glpat-xxxx
export GL_HOST=foo.com/bar
scorecard --repo foo.com/bar/<org>/<project>

To use a GitHub Enterprise host github.corp.com, use the GH_HOST environment variable.

# Set the GitHub Enterprise host without https prefix or slash with relevant authentication token
export GH_HOST=github.corp.com
export GITHUB_AUTH_TOKEN=token

scorecard --repo=github.corp.com/org/repo
# OR without github host url
scorecard --repo=org/repo

For projects in the --npm, --pypi, --rubygems, or --nuget ecosystems, you have the option to run Scorecard using a package manager. Provide the package name to run the checks on the corresponding GitHub source code.

For example, --npm=angular.

To run only specific check(s), add the --checks argument with a list of check names.

For example, --checks=CI-Tests,Code-Review.

The currently supported formats are default (text) and json.

These may be specified with the --format flag. For example, --format=json.

The following checks are all run against the target project by default:

To see detailed information about each check, its scoring criteria, and remediation steps, check out the checks documentation page.

For a guide to the checks you should use when getting started, see the beginner's guide to scorecard checks.

Two-factor Authentication (2FA) adds an extra layer of security when logging into websites or apps. 2FA protects your account if your password is compromised by requiring a second form of authentication, such as codes sent via SMS or authentication app, or touching a physical security key.

We strongly recommend that you enable 2FA on any important accounts where it is available. 2FA is not a Scorecard check because GitHub and GitLab do not make that data about user accounts public. Arguably, this data should always remain private, since accounts without 2FA are so vulnerable to attack.

Though it is not an official check, we urge all project maintainers to enable 2FA to protect their projects from compromise.

Follow the steps described at Configuring two-factor authentication

If possible, use either:

• physical security key (preferred), such as Titan or Yubikey
• recovery codes, stored in an access protected and encrypted vault

As a last option, use SMS. Beware: 2FA using SMS is vulnerable to SIM swap attack.

1. Prepare to require 2FA in your organization
2. Require 2FA in your organization

Each individual check returns a score of 0 to 10, with 10 representing the best possible score. Scorecard also produces an aggregate score, which is a weight-based average of the individual checks weighted by risk.

• “Critical” risk checks are weighted at 10
• “High” risk checks are weighted at 7.5
• “Medium” risk checks are weighted at 5
• “Low” risk checks are weighted at 2.5

See the list of current Scorecard checks for each check's risk level.

If you have what looks like a bug, please use the GitHub issue tracking system. Before you file an issue, please search existing issues to see if your issue is already covered.

Before contributing, please follow our Code of Conduct.

See the Contributing documentation for guidance on how to contribute to the project.

If you'd like to add a check, please see guidance here.

If you want to get involved in the Scorecard community or have ideas you'd like to chat about, we discuss this project in the OSSF Best Practices Working Group meetings.

Maintainers are listed in the CODEOWNERS file.

To report a security issue, please follow instructions here.

APAC-friendly Biweekly on Thursdays at 1:00-2:00 PM Pacific (OSSF Public Calendar)

Video Call: LFX z o o m

EMEA-friendly Every 4 Mondays at 7:00-8:00 AM Pacific (OSSF Public Calendar)

Video Call: LFX z o o m

You can see the agenda and meeting notes here.

See the FAQ for answers to Frequently Asked Questions about Scorecard.