Overview

WhiteSource Advise for IntelliJ IDEA is a plug-in for the IntelliJ IDEA Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that is designed to empower developers with important, valuable information on security vulnerabilities concerning open-source components employed in their development projects.

WhiteSource Advise for IntelliJ IDEA does the following:

Support for Languages and Package Managers

WhiteSource Advise for IntelliJ IDEA supports Java, Kotlin and Scala projects using Maven (pom.xml dependency files), and supports Java projects using Gradle (build.gradle dependency files).

NOTES: 

Prerequisites

Ensure the following prerequisites are met:

Supported Versions

The plugin supports the following IntelliJ IDEA versions:

Limitation - Gradle support for the following IntelliJ IDEA versions are not supported on macOS: 

Installing WhiteSource Advise

To install WhiteSource Advise, do as follows:

  1. Start IntelliJ IDEA.

  2. From the menu bar, select File > Settings. The Settings screen is displayed.

  3. From the left sidebar, click Plugins.

  4. In the Search box, enter whitesource and then press Enter from your keyboard. The WhiteSource Advise plugin information is displayed.

  5. Click Install and then click Restart IDE.

  6. In the pop-up dialog box, click Restart.

Activating WhiteSource Advise

To activate WhiteSource Advise, do as follows:

  1. Start IntelliJ IDEA, specifying the preferred project.

  2. From the sidebar on the right, click WhiteSource (if you do not see the sidebar, select View >Tool Windows > WhiteSource). The Welcome screen is displayed.

  3. In Email, enter your organizational email (the email domain must be licensed to use Advise).

  4. In License Key, enter your license key (See here for more information on how to obtain a license key). 

  5. Click Connect.

NOTE: If you check Remember Token, the login credentials will be stored for later use. Once stored, the WhiteSource Advise login credentials will be used for all projects.

Configuring WhiteSource Advise

Changes made to the WhiteSource settings will only apply after running the next scan.

You can configure the WhiteSource settings on a global or a project level. See the following sections.

Global-Level Configuration

To configure WhiteSource Advise on a global level, do as follows:

  1. From the menu bar, select File > Settings. The Settings screen is displayed.

  2. Select Tools > WhiteSource.

  3. In Scan Results Settings, review the options and modify if necessary. See here for a list of all options.

  4. Click OK.

Project-Level Configuration

To configure WhiteSource Advise on a project-level, do as follows:

  1. From the menu bar, select File > Settings. The Settings screen is displayed.

  2. Select Tools > WhiteSource > Project Settings. The Project Settings screen is displayed.

  3. In Scan Results Settings, review the options and modify if necessary. See here for a list of all options.

  4. By default, all settings are inherited from the global-level configuration. To override the specific configuration on project level, clear the Inherit from global settings checkbox.

  5. Click OK.

Options Table

Option

Description

Default Setting

Only show issues for direct dependencies

When enabled, WhiteSource Advise will only return vulnerabilities for direct dependencies defined in your dependency file.

Unselected (not checked)

Minimum vulnerability severity level

Alert only on detected vulnerabilities satisfying a Low/Medium/High minimum severity level.

  • Low - Vulnerability alerts for all severities (Low, Medium, High) are displayed.

  • Medium- Vulnerability alerts only for Medium or High severities are displayed.

  • High - Vulnerability alerts only for High severities are displayed.

Low

Scanning a Project for Security Vulnerabilities

To scan a project, do one of the following:

Developer Focus Mode

The developer focus mode will allow developers to see only vulnerability alerts that are new in their feature branches compared to a predefined base branch. This will promote the security shift left approach and will empower developers to fix newly introduced vulnerabilities immediately as part of their feature development efforts and prior to merging vulnerable code into production branches.

In order to enable focus mode:

In case there was no scan on the predefined base branch after its initial configuration, all branches will show all the scan results, not just the newly created security alerts. 

Every time the base branch configuration changes, a WhiteSource Advise scan must be triggered on that branch prior to seeing new security results.   

Reviewing Scan Results

To view scan results, do as follows:

  1. Click the Inspection Results tab at the bottom (it may be already open).

  2. Ensure that you are in the WhiteSource Security Check tab (it is part of the Inspection Results area). This tab features information on vulnerability issues found inside the current project. For every module, the relevant vulnerabilities are displayed via either a pom.xml (Maven) or build.gradle (Gradle) item. Note the following functionality:

Displaying Vulnerability Information for a Scanned Component

This section describes how WhiteSource Advise can be used to display security vulnerability details for a project, via IntelliJ's main code view.

Open the WhiteSource security check tab and do as follows:

Viewing General Plugin Information 

To view version information about WhiteSource Advise, do as follows:

The About screen displays information about the Advise plugin's version, general information on your IDE, along with links for Privacy policy and Terms and Conditions.

Generating Debug Logs for WhiteSource Support

To generate debug logs, do as follows:

  1. From the menubar, click Help. A menu is displayed.

  2. Select Diagnostic Tools > Debug Log Settings. The Custom Debug Log Configuration dialog box is displayed.

  3. Enter this text: #org.whitesource.intellij.plugin

  4. Click OK.

Debug logs will now be generated for the integration.

Upgrading WhiteSource Advise 

To upgrade the WhiteSource Advise plugin, do as follows:

  1. From the menu bar, select File > Settings > Plugins. Ensure that you are in the Installed tab. A list of installed plugins is displayed.

  2. In the Downloaded section, search for WhiteSource Advise, and on the right-hand side, click Update.
    NOTE: If there is no new version, the Update button will not appear, and there is no need to continue this procedure. 

  3. Select WhiteSource Advise.

  4. If you are prompted to restart, do so.

Uninstalling WhiteSource Advise

To uninstall the plugin, do as follows: 

  1. From the menu bar, select File > Settings > Plugins. Ensure that you are in the Installed tab. A list of installed plugins is displayed. 

  2. In the Downloaded section, search for WhiteSource Advise and click it. The WhiteSource Advise plugin page is displayed.

  3. On the right-hand side, click the drop-down box, and then click Uninstall. The Plugin Uninstall dialog box is displayed. 

  4. Click Yes to confirm.

  5. If you are prompted to restart, do so.