Install Syft on Ubuntu 24.04

Syft is an open-source command line tool used to analyze container images and filesystems to generate a Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). An SBOM is a comprehensive list of all software components, libraries, and dependencies in a project, image, or filesystem. This tutorial shows how to install Syft on Ubuntu 24.04.

Install Syft

Check the latest release version tag for Syft and assign it to a variable:

SYFT_VERSION=$(curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/anchore/syft/releases/latest" | grep -Po '"tag_name": "v\K[0-9.]+')

Download Syft archive from GitHub releases page:

wget -qO syft.tar.gz https://github.com/anchore/syft/releases/latest/download/syft_${SYFT_VERSION}_linux_amd64.tar.gz

Extract executable to the /usr/local/bin directory:

sudo tar xf syft.tar.gz -C /usr/local/bin syft

We can check Syft version as follows:

syft --version

Remove no longer needed file:

rm -rf syft.tar.gz

Testing Syft

To use Syft to generate an SBOM from a Docker image, you can run the command:

syft ubuntu:latest

This command analyzes the Docker image, scanning its contents to identify all software packages and dependencies within the image. The command then generates an SBOM, listing details like package names, versions, and metadata.

Output example:

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✔ Parsed image                                             sha256:61b2756d6f4...0ae67b9e1
✔ Cataloged contents                                              74f92a6b358...4389035aa
 ├── ✔ Packages                        [91 packages]
 ├── ✔ File digests                    [2,041 files]
 ├── ✔ File metadata                   [2,041 locations]
 └── ✔ Executables                     [722 executables]
NAME                 VERSION                      TYPE
apt                  2.7.14build2                 deb
base-files           13ubuntu10.1                 deb
base-passwd          3.6.3build1                  deb
bash                 5.2.21-2ubuntu4              deb
bsdutils             1:2.39.3-9ubuntu6.1          deb
coreutils            9.4-3ubuntu6                 deb
dash                 0.5.12-6ubuntu5              deb
debconf              1.5.86ubuntu1                deb
...

Uninstall Syft

To uninstall Syft, remove its associated file:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/syft

Remove Syft cache:

rm -rf ~/.cache/syft