Open source software is a key component in modern applications. It has created a new era in software development, promoting a free exchange of ideas within the developer community and enabling developers to build more functional software, faster than ever. Based on most estimates, 70-90% of any piece of modern software includes open source code.

A few months ago, we released our 12th annual State of Software Security (SOSS) Report. In our announcement blog, we noted new application development trends (like increased use of microservices and open-source libraries), the positive impact that Veracode Security Labs has on time to remediate security flaws, and the increased use of multiple application security scan types. But what we have yet to dive into is the security flaws we found in different programming languages.

In recent years more open source vulnerabilities have been discovered than ever before. This is all part of the natural evolution; it’s what we expect to see as the amount of open source usage grows within organizations. But there’s something that we missed in this equation: while identifying vulnerabilities, organizations haven’t found a way to block unwanted dependencies, which made them vulnerable to attacks like never before.