This guide shows you how to mute vulnerabilities in Kiuwan Insights.
As explained in Insights Security, Kiuwan Insights searches for vulnerabilities reported to the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD) (https://nvd.nist.gov/) that affect any of the external components being used by your application.
If Kiuwan finds any reported vulnerability of any component, it will display the details of the vulnerability and score the component in a Security Risk indicator.
But, depending on the specific case, the alert might not apply to your organization or you can decide not to be alerted about certain vulnerabilities.
In these cases, you can decide to mute the vulnerability so Kiuwan does not alert about it.
Hint: To mute vulnerabilities, only users granted Application Management permission are allowed to access Mute Vulnerabilities modules.
Scope of Mutes
Kiuwan Insights lets you mute a specific CVE over a component(s) (i.e., this specific component should not raise this specific CVE)
Note: You cannot completely mute a CVE.You can mute a CVE over a specific component(s), but the CVE remains active, and any new component affected by that CVE will still be reported.
Muting a vulnerability over a component can be applied to several scopes
| Mute Scope | Precedence | Meaning |
| Global | 1 | The CVE muted applies globally to the selected component, i.e. to all the applications that component may appear. |
| Application | 2 |
The CVE muted applies to the selected component only in the specified application. The same component in other applications remains flagged as vulnerable by that CVE. |
The precedence column means the applicability of the mute in case of conflicts, being applied to the case with a higher precedence value.
Note: Changes are retroactive. Mutes are applied retroactively, i.e., mutes will be applied not only to future analyses but also to past analyses.
How to mute CVE vulnerabilities
You can mute at different locations:
- Components tab (selecting a component row, and clicking on the Mute Vulnerabilities component's menu option)
- Security tab (selecting a CVE row, and clicking on the Mute Vulnerabilities menu option of any of the components affected by that CVE)
- Selecting Mute Vulnerabilities option at the Components / Security tab's hamburger menu.
- Insights management section in the admin space
Global Mutes Administration
Kiuwan Insights allows you to globally administrate the mutes defined within your Kiuwan account.
You can access the Global Mute Admin by selecting the Mute Vulnerabilities option at the Components / Security tab's hamburger menu.
Mute Vulnerabilities allows you to manage mutes based on Vulnerabilities and/or Components
By Vulnerability
When "By Vulnerability" tab is selected, the full list of Vulnerabilities discovered through all the applications of your Kiuwan account is displayed.
Click a CVE to open the list of components affected by that vulnerability.
Click Modify in the component row to open the Mute Vulnerabilities dialog.
Then, you can decide to mute the vulnerability for the selected component for either all applications, for a set of apps, or only one application.
After muting, the scope of the mute is at the Mute Vulnerabilities tab.
By Component
When By Component is selected, the full list of components affected by any CVE through all the applications of your Kiuwan account is displayed
Click a Component to open the list of CVEs found for that component.
Clicking Modify for a CVE will open Mute Vulnerabilities dialog.
Then, you can decide to mute the vulnerability for the selected component either for all applications, for a set of apps, or only for one application.
After muting, you will see the scope of the mute in the Mute Vulnerabilities tab.
Muting at the Component tab
Also, you can mute in the Components tab by clicking the dropdown menu at the right of a specific Component and selecting Mute Vulnerabilities.
In the Mute Vulnerabilities dialog, select the CVE to Global Mute or Application Mute.
After clicking Save the muted vulnerability grays out when expanding the component.
Muting at the Security tab
The mute option is found also in the Security tab. Click a Vulnerability to display more details and the list of components affected by the vulnerability. At the bottom, in the Component section, click each dropdown button to mute vulnerabilities for each one of them.
There is a special case (as you can see below). It happens when there are two mutes for that CVE component: it's muted by a Global mute and also by an Application mute. Then, there are two mutes, i.e. the component is muted for two reasons.
Whatever the mute reason, just select the Mute Vulnerabilities from the dropdown menu at the right of a specific Component.
Then, the Mute Vulnerabilities dialog opens.
The Mute Vulnerabilities dialog lets you select the CVE to mute and decide Global Mute or Application Mute.
Muting in Insights Management
Open the drop-down menu on the upper-right corner and select Insights Management
The Mute Vulnerabilities page displays:
Please follow the instructions mentioned in the steps before to mute vulnerabilities.