View licenses and dependencies

This document describes how to view and filter dependency metadata that Artifact Analysis detects with automatic scanning.

When you enable the scanning API to to identify vulnerabilities in container images, Artifact Analysis also gathers information about the dependencies and licenses used in your images.

You can use this metadata to understand the components of your container images and remediate security issues.

Artifact Analysis provides dependency and license detection for OS packages and supported language packages within container images stored in stored in a Docker format Artifact Registry repository. For more information, see Container scanning overview.

Like vulnerability information, license and dependency metadata is generated each time you push an image to Artifact Registry, then stored in Artifact Analysis.

Artifact Analysis continues to scan images and packages as long as they have been pulled within the last 30 days. After 30 days, metadata for scanned images and packages will no longer be updated, and the results will be stale.

Artifact Analysis archives metadata that has been stale for more than 90 days. This archived metadata can be evaluated only by using the API. You can re-scan an image with stale or archived metadata by pulling that image. Refreshing metadata can take up to 24 hours. Packages with stale or archived metadata can't be rescanned.

Before you begin

  1. Sign in to your Google Account.

    If you don't already have one, sign up for a new account.

  2. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  3. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  4. Enable the Container Analysis, Artifact Registry APIs.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the APIs

  5. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

  6. If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

  7. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command: 

    gcloud init

  8. In the Google Cloud console, on the project selector page, select or create a Google Cloud project.

    Roles required to select or create a project

    • Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
    • Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

    Go to project selector

  9. Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

  10. Enable the Container Analysis, Artifact Registry APIs.

    Roles required to enable APIs

    To enable APIs, you need the serviceusage.services.enable permission. If you created the project, then you likely already have this permission through the Owner role (roles/owner). Otherwise, you can get this permission through the Service Usage Admin role (roles/serviceusage.serviceUsageAdmin). Learn how to grant roles.

    Enable the APIs

  11. Install the Google Cloud CLI.

  12. If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

  13. To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command: 

    gcloud init
  14. Have a Docker repository in Artifact Registry . See instructions on generating SBOMs.

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to view SBOM data and filter results, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles on the project:

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

View licenses and dependencies in the Google Cloud console

  1. Open the Artifact Registry Repositories page.

    Open the Repositories page

    The page displays a list of your repositories.

  2. In the repositories list, click a repository name.

    The Repository details page opens and displays a list of your images.

  3. In the images list, click an image name.

    The page displays a list of your image digests.

  4. In the image digest list, click a digest name.

    The page displays a row of tabs where the Overview tab is open, showing details such as format, location, repository, virtual size, and tags.

  5. In the row of tabs, click the