Excluding the SUSE Linux Snapshots directory from Language Library enumeration

Summary

The “language library” enumeration plugins will now exclude SUSE Linux’s snapshots directory when searching the filesystem.

Change

Before the update, when enumerating “language libraries” - such as Python packages, Node.js modules, etc. - on SUSE Linux hosts that use btrfs as their filesystem, reduced scan performance was observed. This is because btrfs creates and maintains snapshots in the /.snapshots directory, which can contain multiple redundant copies of files. This caused unnecessary processing on thorough scans.

After the update, this snapshots directory has been excluded from searches executed by the find command for language library enumeration plugins on SUSE Linux.

Impact

This change is expected to improve the performance of scans on SUSE Linux assets. If language libraries were present in snapshots directory, they will no longer show up in Tenable scan results, along with any associated vulnerabilities. If customers would like to scan the snapshots directory, the "Include Filepath" option in the Advanced Scan Settings configuration can be used to force the scanning of these paths.