LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning Tools

Containerization has emerged as a revolutionary technology in the software development and deployment industry. Containers offer a portable and lightweight solution that allows for packaging applications and their dependencies systematically and efficiently. In addition, containers offer faster depl...

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Main Authors: Md Sadun Haq, Ali Saman Tosun, Turgay Korkmaz
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2025-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11077135/
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author Md Sadun Haq
Ali Saman Tosun
Turgay Korkmaz
author_facet Md Sadun Haq
Ali Saman Tosun
Turgay Korkmaz
author_sort Md Sadun Haq
collection DOAJ
description Containerization has emerged as a revolutionary technology in the software development and deployment industry. Containers offer a portable and lightweight solution that allows for packaging applications and their dependencies systematically and efficiently. In addition, containers offer faster deployment and near-native performance with isolation and security drawbacks compared to Virtual Machines. To address the security issues, scanning tools that scan containers for preexisting vulnerabilities have been developed, but they suffer from false positives. Moreover, using different scanning tools to scan the same container provides different results, which leads to inconsistencies and confusion. Limited work has been done to address these issues. This paper provides a fully functional and extensible framework named LUCID that can reduce false positives and inconsistencies provided by multiple scanning tools. We use a database-centric approach and perform query-based analysis, to pinpoint the causes for inconsistencies. Our results show that our framework can reduce inconsistencies by 70%. The framework has been tested on both Intel64/AMD64 and ARM architecture. We also create a Dynamic Classification component that can successfully classify and predict the different severity levels with an accuracy of 84%. We believe this paper will raise awareness regarding security in container technologies and enable container scanning companies to improve their tool to provide better and more consistent results.
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issn 2169-3536
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spelling doaj-art-0c8237ec2e3b404ab9be2410fe038ab82025-08-20T03:32:55ZengIEEEIEEE Access2169-35362025-01-011312730712732110.1109/ACCESS.2025.358762611077135LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning ToolsMd Sadun Haq0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9305-3093Ali Saman Tosun1Turgay Korkmaz2https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5529-673XDepartment of Computer Science, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USADepartment of Computer Science and Mathematics, The University of North Carolina at Pembroke, Pembroke, NC, USADepartment of Computer Science, The University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX, USAContainerization has emerged as a revolutionary technology in the software development and deployment industry. Containers offer a portable and lightweight solution that allows for packaging applications and their dependencies systematically and efficiently. In addition, containers offer faster deployment and near-native performance with isolation and security drawbacks compared to Virtual Machines. To address the security issues, scanning tools that scan containers for preexisting vulnerabilities have been developed, but they suffer from false positives. Moreover, using different scanning tools to scan the same container provides different results, which leads to inconsistencies and confusion. Limited work has been done to address these issues. This paper provides a fully functional and extensible framework named LUCID that can reduce false positives and inconsistencies provided by multiple scanning tools. We use a database-centric approach and perform query-based analysis, to pinpoint the causes for inconsistencies. Our results show that our framework can reduce inconsistencies by 70%. The framework has been tested on both Intel64/AMD64 and ARM architecture. We also create a Dynamic Classification component that can successfully classify and predict the different severity levels with an accuracy of 84%. We believe this paper will raise awareness regarding security in container technologies and enable container scanning companies to improve their tool to provide better and more consistent results.https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11077135/Anomaly Detectionmachine learningdatabasesmulti-label classificationDockerHubscanning tools
spellingShingle Md Sadun Haq
Ali Saman Tosun
Turgay Korkmaz
LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning Tools
IEEE Access
Anomaly Detection
machine learning
databases
multi-label classification
DockerHub
scanning tools
title LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning Tools
title_full LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning Tools
title_fullStr LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning Tools
title_full_unstemmed LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning Tools
title_short LUCID: A Framework for Reducing False Positives and Inconsistencies Among Container Scanning Tools
title_sort lucid a framework for reducing false positives and inconsistencies among container scanning tools
topic Anomaly Detection
machine learning
databases
multi-label classification
DockerHub
scanning tools
url https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11077135/
work_keys_str_mv AT mdsadunhaq lucidaframeworkforreducingfalsepositivesandinconsistenciesamongcontainerscanningtools
AT alisamantosun lucidaframeworkforreducingfalsepositivesandinconsistenciesamongcontainerscanningtools
AT turgaykorkmaz lucidaframeworkforreducingfalsepositivesandinconsistenciesamongcontainerscanningtools