Securing your CI/CD supply chain before it bites you
Your build pipeline has god-mode access to production. Here's how attackers exploit it and the controls that shut the door.
Your CI/CD pipeline is the most over-privileged, under-secured system you own. It can read every secret, build every artifact and deploy to production — and most teams guard it far less carefully than the app it ships. Attackers have noticed.
The threats that matter
Supply-chain attacks rarely break down the front door. They slip in through a compromised dependency, a leaked token, or a malicious pull request that runs in your trusted pipeline.
- Pin dependencies: lockfiles and hashes, not floating versions.
- Short-lived credentials: OIDC federation instead of long-lived keys.
- Least privilege: the pipeline gets only the access a given job needs.
Provenance and signing
We sign build artifacts and generate a software bill of materials (SBOM) so you can prove what went into a release and detect tampering. If you can't say exactly what's running in production, you can't secure it.
None of these controls is exotic, but together they turn your pipeline from a soft target into a hardened one. The build system deserves the same scrutiny as the app.