Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator comprehensive operating system collection
The Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator scans different operating systems to guarantee a robust and detailed analysis of system components. Generating an SBOM helps you understand the composition of your operating system, so you can identify vulnerabilities in system managed packages. This topic describes key features of different operating system package collections the Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator supports. For information about the operating systems that Amazon Inspector supports, see Supported operating systems and programming languages for Amazon Inspector.
Supported operating system artifacts
The Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator supports the following operating system artifacts:
| Platform | Binary | Source | Stream |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Alma Linux |
N/A |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Alpine Linux |
Yes |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Amazon Linux |
N/A |
Yes |
N/A |
|
CentOS |
N/A |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Chainguard |
Yes |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Debian |
Yes |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Distroless |
Yes |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Fedora |
N/A |
Yes |
N/A |
|
MinimOS |
Yes |
Yes |
N/A |
|
OpenSUSE |
N/A |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Oracle Linux |
N/A |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Photon OS |
N/A |
Yes |
N/A |
|
RHEL |
N/A |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Rocky Linux |
N/A |
Yes |
Yes |
|
SLES |
N/A |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Ubuntu |
Yes |
Yes |
N/A |
|
Windows |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
APK-based OS package collection
This section includes the supported platforms and key features for the APK-based OS package collection.
For more information, see Alpine Package Keeper
Supported platforms
The following are supported platforms.
-
Alpine Linux
Note
For APK-based systems, the Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator collects package metadata from the /lib/apk/db/
Key features
-
Package name collection – Extracts the name of each installed package
-
Version collection – Extracts the version of each installed package
-
Source package identification – Identifies the source package for each installed package
Example
The following snippet is an example of an APK database file.
C:Q1JlboSJkrN4qkDcokr4zenpcWEXQ= P:zlib V:1.2.13-r1 A:x86_64 S:54253 I:110592 T:A compression/decompression Library U:https://zlib.net/ L:Zlib o:zlib
DPKG-based OS package collection
This section includes the supported platforms and key features for the DPKG-based OS package collection.
For more information, see Debian Package
Supported platforms
The following platforms are supported.
-
Debian
-
Ubuntu
Note
For DPKG-based systems, the Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator collects package metadata from the /var/lib/dpkg/status
Key features
The following are key features for DPKG-based OS packages.
-
Package name collection – Extracts the name of each installed package
-
Version collection – Extracts the version of each installed package
-
Source package identification
– Identifies the source package for each installed package
Example
The following snippet is an example of a /var/lib/dpkg/ file.
Package: zlib1g Status: install ok installed Priority: optional Section: libs Installed-Size: 168 Maintainer: Mark Brown <broonie@debian.org> Architecture: amd64 Multi-Arch: same Source: zlib Version: 1:1.2.13.dfsg-1 Provides: libz1 Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14) Breaks: libxml2 (<< 2.7.6.dfsg-2), texlive-binaries (<< 2009-12) Conflicts: zlib1 (<= 1:1.0.4-7) Description: compression library - runtime zlib is a library implementing the deflate compression method found in gzip and PKZIP. This package includes the shared library. Homepage: http://zlib.net/
RPM-based OS package collection
This section includes the supported platforms and key features for the RPM-based OS package collection.
For more information, see RPM Package Manager
Supported platforms
The following platforms are supported.
-
Alma Linux
-
Amazon Linux
-
CentOS
-
Fedora
-
OpenSUSE
-
Oracle Linux
-
PhotonOS
-
RedHat Enterprise Linux
-
Rocky Linux
-
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Note
For RPM-based systems, the Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator collects package metadata from the /var/lib/rpm
Key features
The following are key features for RPM-based OS package collections.
-
Package name collection – Extracts the name of each installed package
-
Version collection – Extracts the version of each installed package
-
Source package identification
– Identifies the source package for each installed package -
Stream support
– Extracts stream metadata of each installed package
Example
The following is an example of an RPM database file snippet.
/usr/lib/sysimage/rpm/rpmdb.sqlite /usr/lib/sysimage/rpm/Packages /usr/lib/sysimage/rpm/Packages.db /var/lib/rpm/rpmdb.sqlite /var/lib/rpm/Packages /var/lib/rpm/Packages.db
Windows OS version collection
Unlike Linux-based operating systems, Windows does not use a package management system for the operating system itself. The Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator collects only the Windows OS version information. For Windows application scanning, use the windows-apps scanner instead. The windows-apps scanner collects information about installed applications on Windows systems. For more information, See Microsoft applications ecosystem collection.
Key features
-
OS version collection – Extracts the Windows OS version from the Windows Registry. The extracted OS version is used for vulnerability detection for Windows OS.
Registry keys and values
The following Windows Registry keys and values are used to collect OS name and version information.
-
Registry Key
HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion -
Registry Value
-
ProductName – OS name and edition (e.g., "Windows Server 2025 Datacenter")
-
CurrentMajorVersionNumber – the major version of OS
-
CurrentMinorVersionNumber – The minor version of OS
-
CurrentBuild – The build number of OS
-
UBR – The revision number of OS
-
Chainguard image package collection
This section includes the supported platforms and key features for Chainguard image package collection.
For more information, see Images
Supported platforms
The following platforms are supported
-
Wolfi Linux
Note
For Chainguard images, the Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator collects package metadata from the /lib/apk/db/installed file.
Key features
The following are key features.
-
Package name collection – Extracts the name of each installed package
-
Version collection – Extracts the version of each installed package
-
Source package identification – Identifies the source package for each installed package
Example
The following snippet is an example of a Chainguard image file.
P:wolfi-keys V:1-r8 A:x86_64 L:MIT T:Wolfi signing keyring o:wolfi-keys
Distroless image package collection
Distroless containers are container images that exclude package managers, shells, and other utilities in Linux distributions. Distroless containers only include essential dependencies required to run the application and improve performance and security.
Note
For Distroless images/var/lib/dpkg/status.d file.
Only Debian and Ubuntu-based distributions are supported.
These can be identified by the NAME field in the /etc/os-release file system, which shows "Debian" or "Ubuntu."
Key features
-
Package name collection – Extracts the name of each installed package
-
Version collection – Extracts the version of each installed package
Example
The following is an example of a Distroless image file.
Package: tzdata Version: 2021a-1+deb11u10 Architecture: all Maintainer: GNU Libc Maintainers <debian-glibc@lists.debian.org> Installed-Size: 3413 Depends: debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0 Provides: tzdata-bullseye Section: localization Priority: required Multi-Arch: foreign Homepage: https://www.iana.org/time-zones Description: time zone and daylight-saving time data This package contains data required for the implementation of standard local time for many representative locations around the globe. It is updated periodically to reflect changes made by political bodies to time zone boundaries, UTC offsets, and daylight-saving rules.
MinimOS package collection
This section includes the supported platforms and key features for Minimus image package collection.
For more information, see the Minimus
Supported platforms
The following platforms are supported.
-
MinimOS
Note
For Minimus images, the Amazon Inspector SBOM Generator collects package metadata from the /lib/apk/db/installed file.
Key features
The following are key features.
-
Package name collection – Extracts the name of each installed package
-
Version collection – Extracts the name of each installed package
-
Source package identification – Identifies the source package for each installed package
The following is a snippet of a Minimus image file.
P:ca-certificates-bundle V:20241121-r1 A:aarch64 L:MPL-2.0 AND MIT T: o:ca-certificates