GitHub Action for Vulnerability Scanning

February 4, 2026 · View on GitHub

:zap: Find threats in files or containers at lightning speed :zap:

This is a GitHub Action for invoking the Grype scanner and returning the vulnerabilities found, and optionally fail if a vulnerability is found with a configurable severity level.

Use this in your workflows to quickly verify files or containers' content after a build and before pushing, allowing PRs, or deploying updates.

The action invokes the grype command-line tool, with these benefits:

Runs locally, without sending data outbound - no credentials required!
Speedy scan operations
Scans both paths and container images
Easy failure evaluation depending on vulnerability severity

The example workflows have lots of usage examples for scanning both containers and directories.

By default, a scan will produce very detailed output on system packages like an RPM or DEB, but also language-based packages. These are some of the supported packages and libraries:

Supported Linux Distributions:

Alpine
BusyBox
CentOS and RedHat
Debian and Debian-based distros like Ubuntu

Supported packages and libraries:

Ruby Bundles
Python Wheel, Egg, requirements.txt
JavaScript NPM/Yarn
Java JAR/EAR/WAR, Jenkins plugins JPI/HPI
Go modules

Tip

Security best practice: For production workflows, pin actions to a full commit SHA rather than a version tag. You can find the latest SHA for each release on the action's releases page.

Container scanning

The simplest workflow for scanning a localbuild/testimage container:

- name: Set up Docker Buildx
  uses: docker/setup-buildx-action@v3

- name: build local container
  uses: docker/build-push-action@v6
  with:
    tags: localbuild/testimage:latest
    push: false
    load: true

- name: Scan image
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v7
  with:
    image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"

Directory scanning

To scan a directory, add the following step:

- name: Scan current project
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v7
  with:
    path: "."

The path key allows any valid path for the current project. The root of the path ("." in this example) is the repository root.

Scanning an SBOM file

Use the sbom key to scan an SBOM file:

- name: Create SBOM
  uses: anchore/sbom-action@v0
  with:
    format: spdx-json
    output-file: "${{ github.event.repository.name }}-sbom.spdx.json"

- name: Scan SBOM
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v7
  with:
    sbom: "${{ github.event.repository.name }}-sbom.spdx.json"

Failing a build on vulnerability severity

By default, if any vulnerability at medium or higher is seen, the build fails. To have the build step fail in cases where there are vulnerabilities with a severity level different than the default, set the severity-cutoff field to one of low, high, or critical:

With a different severity level:

- name: Scan image
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v7
  with:
    image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
    fail-build: true
    severity-cutoff: critical

Optionally, change the fail-build field to false to avoid failing the build regardless of severity:

- name: Scan image
  uses: anchore/scan-action@v7
  with:
    image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
    fail-build: false

Action Inputs

The inputs image, path, and sbom are mutually exclusive to specify the source to scan; all the other keys are optional. These are all the available keys to configure this action, along with the defaults:

Input Name	Description	Default Value
`image`	The image to scan	N/A
`path`	The file path to scan	N/A
`sbom`	The SBOM to scan	N/A
`registry-username`	The registry username to use when authenticating to an external registry
`registry-password`	The registry password to use when authenticating to an external registry
`fail-build`	Fail the build if a vulnerability is found with a higher severity. That severity defaults to `medium` and can be set with `severity-cutoff`.	`true`
`output-format`	Set the output parameter after successful action execution. Valid choices are `json`, `sarif`, `cyclonedx-xml`, `cyclonedx-json`, and `table`; where `table` output will also display in the logs.	`sarif`
`output-file`	File to output the Grype scan results to. Defaults to a file in the system temp directory, available in the action outputs
`severity-cutoff`	Optionally specify the minimum vulnerability severity to trigger a failure. Valid choices are "negligible", "low", "medium", "high" and "critical". Any vulnerability with a severity less than this value will lead to a "warning" result. Default is "medium".	`medium`
`only-fixed`	Specify whether to only report vulnerabilities that have a fix available.	`false`
`add-cpes-if-none`	Specify whether to autogenerate missing CPEs.	`false`
`by-cve`	Specify whether to orient results by CVE rather than GHSA.	`false`
`vex`	Specify a list of VEX documents to consider when producing scanning results.	`false`
`cache-db`	Cache the Grype DB in GitHub action cache and restore before checking for updates	`false`
`grype-version`	An optional Grype version to download, defaults to the pinned version in GrypeVersion.js.
`config`	Optional Grype configuration files (newline-separated). Setting this will disable auto-detection of configuration files (e.g. .grype.yaml) - only the specified files will be loaded..

Action Outputs

Output Name	Description	Type
`sarif`	Path to the SARIF report file, if `output-format` is `sarif`	string
`json`	Path to the report file , if `output-format` is `json`	string
`cyclonedx-xml`	Path to the CycloneDX report file, if `output-format` is `cyclonedx`	string
`cyclonedx-json`	Path to the CycloneDX JSON report file, if `output-format` is `cyclonedx-json`	string

Example Workflows

Assuming your repository has a Dockerfile in the root directory:

name: Container Image CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd # v6.0.2
      - name: Build the container image
        run: docker build . --file Dockerfile --tag localbuild/testimage:latest
      - uses: anchore/scan-action@v7
        with:
          image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
          fail-build: true

Same example as above, but with SARIF output format - as is the default, the action will generate a SARIF report, which can be uploaded and then displayed as a Code Scanning Report in the GitHub UI.

:bulb: Code Scanning is a Github service that is currently in Beta. Follow the instructions on how to enable this service for your project.

name: Container Image CI
on: [push]
jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    # Permissions key is required for CodeQL SARIF Upload, per the docs:
    # https://docs.github.com/en/code-security/code-scanning/integrating-with-code-scanning/uploading-a-sarif-file-to-github
    permissions:
      security-events: write
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@de0fac2e4500dabe0009e67214ff5f5447ce83dd # v6.0.2
      - name: Build the Container image
        run: docker build . --file Dockerfile --tag localbuild/testimage:latest
      - uses: anchore/scan-action@v7
        id: scan
        with:
          image: "localbuild/testimage:latest"
      - name: upload Anchore scan SARIF report
        uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v4
        with:
          sarif_file: ${{ steps.scan.outputs.sarif }}

Optionally, you can add a step to inspect the SARIF report produced:

- name: Inspect action SARIF report
  run: cat ${{ steps.scan.outputs.sarif }}

Additional configuration

You may add a .grype.yaml file at your repository root for more Grype configuration such as ignoring certain matches.

anchore/scan-action/download-grype

A sub-action to download Grype and optionally cache the Grype DB.

Input parameters:

Parameter	Description	Default
`grype-version`	An optional Grype version to download, defaults to the pinned version in GrypeVersion.js.
`cache-db`	Cache the Grype DB in GitHub action cache and restore before checking for updates	`false`

Output parameters:

Parameter	Description
`cmd`	a reference to the Grype binary.

cmd can be referenced in a workflow like other output parameters: ${{ steps.<step-id>.outputs.cmd }}

Example usage:

- uses: anchore/scan-action/download-grype@v3
  id: grype
- run: ${{steps.grype.outputs.cmd}} dir:.