Secure code review is the process of identifying vulnerabilities and security issues—such as bugs, mistakes, and logic problems—within a piece of source code, before it’s merged and shipped, helping to avoid costly fixes further down the line. Secure code reviews can be carried out automatically, with the help of tools such as SAST and DAST software, or manually. In a manual code review, also known as a “peer review”, a developer enlists the help of other developers to check their source code for issues line by line. They’re often cheaper than automatic reviews and can help foster better communication and more security coding practices amongst development teams. However, it can be difficult to keep track of manual reviews. That’s where secure code review software comes in.
Secure code review software helps facilitate secure code reviews by gathering and organizing changed files and displaying the differences so they’re easier to keep track of. It also facilitates communication between code reviewers and authors by enabling them to annotate the code, leave comments, and respond to feedback. As well as facilitating the code review process, secure code review tools help improve the process by generating reports on the efficacy and effectiveness of code reviews. This means that they can be adjusted and improved to meet the needs and working style of the development team.
By utilizing secure code review tools, developers can overcome the limitations of common manual code review methods (such as pair programming and over-the-shoulder reviews). For example, tool-assisted reviews enable them to carry out reviews asynchronously and remotely, secure code review tools automatically notify the author when they’ve received feedback and track all suggested changes.
In this article, we’ll explore the top secure code review software solutions designed to facilitate collaborative code security reviews. We’ll highlight the key use cases and features of each solution, including integration capabilities, vulnerability reporting, support for coding languages, and code annotation.
Atlassian Bitbucket Code Review is a solution designed to help businesses find bugs faster, collaborate efficiently, and merge code confidently. The platform features a code-first interface, making it easier to review large diffs with an updated side-by-side view, contextual commenting, and task management capabilities.
BitBucket’s list conditions feature ensures pull requests are consistently vetted before merging, and the solution offers integrated test results and security scan results in the pull request view, enabling developers to code confidently and securely. Bitbucket Code Review keeps users informed with a one-page view, eliminating the need for multiple tabs and context switching. The premium plan offers additional benefits, such as enforcing merge checks to guarantee that merge conditions are met before the pull request is merged. Bitbucket Code Review also offers native Jira integration, which allows for the easy assignment of tasks and the creation of Jira issues directly from within your pull request. In this way, Atlassian Bitbucket Code Review minimizes the time spent in meetings and allows developers to focus on coding.
Atlassian Crucible is a code review tool that allows teams to review code, discuss changes, share knowledge, and identify defects in various version control systems such as SVN, Git, Mercurial, CVS, and Perforce. Crucible enables the creation of formal, workflow-based, or quick code reviews with the ability to assign reviewers within your team. It allows for threaded discussions on specific source lines, files, or entire changesets, providing a unified view of code activity for commits, reviews, and comments.
Atlassian Crucible aids in improving code quality by offering data on areas of your codebase that have not been reviewed extensively, and it provides a quick view of review status and potential bottlenecks. In addition, Crucible simplifies the audit and compliance process by delivering a complete audit trail of all code review details and activity.
Crucible offers seamless integration with Jira Software, Bitbucket Server, Bamboo, and hundreds of other developer tools. Jira Software automatically updates issues based on review activity, and Crucible enables easy conversion of review comments into issues. With one-click connectivity to Bitbucket, Crucible streamlines the creation of reviews for new branches. Finally, Crucible’s REST API offers further customization and the ability to build your own add-ons as needed.
Azure DevOps is an all-inclusive development suite that offers a wide range of modern development services designed to streamline planning, collaboration, and deployment processes. Azure DevOps features several key components, each tailored to meet unique project requirements and enhance productivity.
One of the essential services provided by Azure DevOps is Azure Boards, which offers agile planning tools for tracking and managing work. With configurable Kanban boards, interactive backlogs, and efficient reporting tools, Azure Boards ensures that organizations can oversee all aspects of their projects. Meanwhile, Azure Pipelines is a comprehensive CI/CD platform that supports flexible builds, tests, and deployments in any language to any cloud or on-premises environment.
Another essential aspect of Azure DevOps is Azure Repos, providing robust Git hosting, effective code reviews, and unlimited free repositories. This enables efficient code management and collaboration for projects of any size. Additionally, Azure DevOps integrates with GitHub Advanced Security to offer AppSec testing in a developer-centric workflow, ensuring security is maintained without hindering innovation. Azure DevOps also includes Azure Test Plans for manual and exploratory testing, which help ensure code quality and confidently release applications. Lastly, Azure Artifacts serves as a universal package repository, simplifying the sharing and integration of Maven, npm, NuGet, and Python packages within a team’s CI/CD pipeline.
Gerrit Code Review is a robust platform for reviewing and managing code changes, serving Git repositories, and extending functionality with custom plugins. Offering detailed file comparisons with syntax highlighting and colored differences, Gerrit allows users to collaborate on specific sections to implement the right modifications.
As a comprehensive Git management solution, Gerrit includes SSH and HTTPS servers compatible with all Git clients. It simplifies repository management by scheduling Git garbage collection over all managed repositories and replicating them to geographical mirrors for reduced latency and backup servers for redundancy. Gerrit Code Review can be customized and enhanced with server-side plugins, the source code for which is accessible through the project listing. Additionally, the Gerrit community encourages collaboration and communication through its Code of Conduct and engages through various channels such as the repo-discuss mailing list, Discord server, Twitter, and monthly Gerrit community meetings. Events like user summits and hackathons are announced on these platforms, ensuring an active and involved community.
GitHub offers its own Code Review tool that’s integrated into every pull request, allowing teams to create review processes that enhance code quality and seamlessly fit into their workflows. Pull requests serve as the foundation for project evolution, feature proposals, and implementation discussions prior to source code modification.
Developers can initiate new feature builds or suggest changes to existing code through a pull request, providing a collaborative platform for team coordination and refinement. Requesting peer reviews is simple; adding users to the pull request sends them a notification for feedback. Reviews can be bundled into a single cohesive review, specifying whether comments require changes or are merely suggestions. The pull request’s history offers a timeline-style interface to explore commits, comments, references, and conversations on code syntax and structure can be made alongside the code. Additionally, the platform’s diffs feature helps preview changes in-context, displaying added, edited, and deleted code adjacent to the original file for easy comparison.
GitHub facilitates resolving simple merge conflicts without the need for a command line. Permission settings grant collaborators appropriate access levels, and protected branches help maintain code integrity. Finally, required status checks add an extra layer of error prevention, while the Status API enforces checks and disables the merge button until they pass.
GitLab is a comprehensive software development lifecycle and DevOps tool within a single application. Offering more than just source code management or CI/CD, GitLab enables teams to maintain high code quality by incorporating seamless code review workflows throughout the development process, thus facilitating collaboration and control.
Incorporating GitLab’s code review features allows team members, reviewers, and approvers to collaborate effectively within merge requests. This collaboration is achieved through features such as diff—which highlights changes next to the original code—, comments for asking questions or discussing changes, and the ability to insert suggestions for one or more lines of code. To maintain high-quality code, merge requests also allow for the implementation of controls, such as defining code owners for each file and setting up approval rules specifying the necessary number of approvals before merging.
GitLab also supports continuous improvement through insights derived from code quality reports and code review analytics. Code quality reports help developers identify and resolve violations directly in the merge request, ensuring the overall health of the code. Code review analytics provide insights into patterns and trends related to code reviews, enabling teams to optimize their development cycle time. With GitLab, organizations can streamline their software development processes and deliver high-quality code efficiently.
SmartBear Collaborator is a comprehensive solution designed to help businesses maintain safety and regulatory compliance across all code, document, artifact, and model reviews. With integrations for 11 source code management systems, Collaborator offers teams the ability to trace versions, identify defects and bugs, and customize review templates to meet the unique requirements of each project.
Collaborator is equipped with customizable checklists and workflows to help standardize reviews, enforce rules, and generate reports. By displaying color-coded differences between code versions and allowing real-time conversations, defects can be marked and classified according to type and severity, ensuring a thorough review process. The platform also enables document review, supporting collaboration and commenting on software requirements, design documents, user stories, and test cases for various file formats.
In addition, Collaborator provides seamless integrations with major software configuration management, IDE, and version control tools. This fosters a more efficient review process, as well as offering detailed reports and metrics to analyze and improve team performance. Furthermore, Collaborator simplifies audit management by generating zip files of peer reviews to maintain transparency during external audits. With support for various SCMs, such as AccuRev, ClearCase, and Subversion, SmartBear Collaborator is a versatile and reliable solution for businesses looking to streamline their code and document review processes.
Everything You Need To Know About Secure Code Review Software (FAQs)
What Is A Secure Code Review?
Code review, also known as peer code review, is the process checking the quality of a piece of source code before it’s merged and shipped to customers. Secure code review specifically focuses on identifying security issues and vulnerabilities within the source code. It can help identify mistakes, bugs, logic problems and any other issues early on. This, in turn, can streamline the software development process as these types of errors are more difficult and costly to remediate further on in the software development lifecycle.
There are two main ways to carry out a secure code review: automatically or manually.
In an automated code review, a review tool automatically reviews the course code in line with a set of pre-defined rules that help it identify vulnerabilities and bugs. Automatic review tools (such as SAST and DAST tools—more on these later) often provide ready integrations with SCM/IDEs, and they’re usually compatible with multiple development environments.
In a manual secure code review, the programmer who wrote the code collaborates with other programmers to check their source code. Manual secure code reviews are usually carried out by one or more developers who are experts in the domain of that piece of code. Because of this, manual secure code reviews don’t just help save time and money—they also facilitate better communication and teamwork amongst development teams, enable shared ownership of code, and foster the education of junior developers by teaching them new ways to troubleshoot problems and write more secure code. When carrying out a manual review, development teams often use secure code review software such as those listed in this guide, to help them keep track of feedback and changes throughout the review process.
Automatic secure code reviews are often faster than manual reviews, but they don’t take into account context such as general business logic, or the developer’s intentions whilst creating the code. Manual reviews are also cheaper than automatic reviews, but they can be more prone to error. Because of this, we recommend using a combination of both methods to carry out an effective secure code review.
What Are The Different Methods For Secure Code Review?
There are two main methods that can be used for secure code review—manual and automatic—but these can be broken down a little further.
Manual Secure Code Review Methods
Over-The-Shoulder Code Reviews
Over-the-shoulder code reviews are considered one of the easiest and most intuitive methods for reviewing code. Once a developer has written their code, a qualified colleague joins them at their workstation (either in person or remotely through a shared screen) and reviews the code, providing suggestions for improvement while the author explains to them why they wrote it the way they did.
This is a very informal review method and may need to be paired with some type of tracking or documentation (such as via one of the tools in this guide) in order to log and verify any small changes that are made during the review and large changes that need to be implemented later.
Email Pass-Around
In an email pass-around review, a developer emails a diff (short for “difference”; a utility that allows programmers to look at two files side-by-side and compare the differences between them, such as where new lines of code have been added) of changes to the whole development team. The other members of the team can then suggest further changes if needed.
While this approach is flexible and usually easier than getting a whole team together in person for a review, an email chain with multiple different suggestions and opinions can quickly become complicated for the author to sort through.
Pair Programming
Pair programming is a continuous review process that involves two developers working together at one workstation; one actively codes, while the other provides real-time feedback.
Pair programming is very effective at inspecting new code, as it bakes the review into the programming process. It can also be useful for training junior developers. However, it’s time-consuming and prevents the reviewer from producing anything else. It’s also less objective than other secure code review methods as both the author and the reviewer are very close to their own work.
Tool-Assisted
Tool-assisted code reviews are not the same as automatic code reviews. With an automatic review, a SAST or DAST tool carries out the entire review. With a tool-assisted review, the review process itself is manual, but facilitated by a tool that:
- Gathers and organizes changed files and displays the differences, with version controls
- Facilitates communication between reviewers and developers, e.g., by allowing them to annotate the code
- Assesses the efficacy and effectiveness of the code review process by generating reports on key metrics
Tool-assisted reviews can help development teams to overcome the limitations of some of the other methods listed above, such as enabling reviews to take place asynchronously and remotely, automatically notifying the author when a review comes in, and ensuring that all comments, suggested changes, and implemented changes are tracked.
Automatic Secure Code Review Methods
Static Application Security Testing (SAST)
Static Application Security Testing tools analyze applications at the code level to identify vulnerabilities that could be exploited, so that the developer can remediate those vulnerabilities before the app goes to market. SAST tools analyze every line of code in an application, cross-referencing them with a database of known vulnerabilities. Any sections of code that are found to contain known vulnerabilities are highlighted, and the solution notifies the developer so they can remediate the issue.
Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST)
Dynamic Application Security Testing tools help identify run-time vulnerabilities and misconfigurations within web applications while they’re in production, by carrying out simulated attacks (or “penetration tests”) on them. These simulated attacks are carried out through the front end, which enables the DAST tool to analyze the app exactly as a threat actor would—from the outside, looking in.
When a DAST tool identifies a vulnerability, it notifies the development team immediately. It also creates a report detailing how an attacker might exploit that vulnerability, which enables the dev team to prioritize their remediation efforts. Some DAST tools also offer “attack replay” to guide dev teams through the discovery and potential exploitation of a vulnerability, making it even easier for them to locate and remediate issues.
What Are The Best Practices For Conducting A Secure Code Review?
When conducting a secure code review, we recommend that you follow these best practices:
- Put together a secure code review guide and checklist to ensure consistency between reviews and different reviewers. This will help when it comes to auditing, as well as ensuring that everyone’s using the same terminology to describe any issues that need to be addressed. The guide should also include a limit on code review sessions to help keep them productive, e.g., only reviewing a certain amount of code, or only reviewing for an hour at a time.
- Review your code regularly during development, rather than carrying out one big review just before it’s released. This will help save time and money further down the line.
- Use a combination of manual and automatic review methods to ensure that you’re conducting reviews as efficiently and effectively as possible.
- Focus your manual reviews on broader security issues and use automatic testing to identify specific issues. Look out for failures in authentication and authorization controls, potential exposures of sensitive data, inadequate error handling, inadequate session management, misconfigurations, logging, encryption, and injection flaws.
- Log all security issues into a reporting tool, and continuously track repetitive issues or insecure code patterns to help inform future reviews. You should also provide context for each change, including its purpose and any other relevant user stories, issues, or tickets.
