The problem with security scanners isn't the scanning

May 29, 2026 · 12:51 AM UTC ·8 min read · 0 reactions · 0 comments · 31 views

TL;DR · WeSearch summary

The article discusses the challenges developers face when using security scanners like Semgrep and Gitleaks. While these tools are effective, they often produce overwhelming amounts of output that can lead to confusion and inaction among developers without security expertise. The author emphasizes that the real issue lies not in the scanning itself, but in the noise generated by the findings, which can result in developers ignoring critical security issues.

Key facts

▪Security scanners like Semgrep and Gitleaks are powerful tools but can generate excessive findings that overwhelm developers.
▪Many developers lack the expertise to triage the results, leading to inaction or burnout.
▪The rise of AI coding tools has exacerbated the problem by increasing the likelihood of sensitive information being inadvertently included in code.

About this source

DEV.to (Top) files mainly under programming. We currently carry 4,924 of its stories.

All DEV.to (Top) coverage →

Original article

DEV.to (Top)

Read full at DEV.to (Top) →

Story provenance

Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record

inspect →

Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.

Record

Original publisher	DEV.to (Top)
Canonical URL	https://dev.to/wael_matoussi/the-problem-with-security-scanners-isnt-the-scanning-5cgl
Publication time	Fri, 29 May 2026 00:51:01 +0000
Retrieval time	2026-05-29T00:59:38.922Z
Last seen	2026-05-29T00:59:38.922Z
Headline source	Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite)
Excerpt source	publisher body
Excerpt method	First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited.
Summary	WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer)
Summary source text	contentText
Citation coverage	Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL.
Cluster	DaHp6jDIyZSv
Cluster logic	Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison.
Ranking reason	Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking.
Publisher visit	Yes — open original
Substitutes article?	No — link-out required for full text

Rights status (four layers)

Publisher-declared

No publisher-confirmed rights record for this source yet.

Machine-readable

No source-specific machine-readable restriction detected beyond the public feed.

WeSearch interpretation

WeSearch declared handling (basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed). This is WeSearch policy, not a legal grant on the publisher's behalf.

Unknown

Retrieval and training permissions are not asserted unless the publisher confirms them.

WeSearch handling by dimension

Indexing	May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)?	Allowed
Snippet	May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown?	Allowed
AI summary	May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article?	Limited
Retrieval / RAG	May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation?	Not asserted
Model training	May the content be used to train AI models?	Not asserted
Commercial reuse	May the content be reused commercially?	Not permitted

Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.

Open original publisher → Source rights JSON → Machine-readable provenance → Rights framework → WESEARCH-STORY-PROVENANCE-V1

Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand

try { if(localStorage) { let currentUser = localStorage.getItem('current_user'); if (currentUser) { currentUser = JSON.parse(currentUser); if (currentUser.id === 3957444) { document.getElementById('article-show-container').classList.add('current-user-is-article-author'); } } } } catch (e) { console.error(e); } wael matoussi Posted on May 29 The problem with security scanners isn't the scanning #webdev #ai #security #devops At a previous job I worked at as a Dev we had someone who ran Semgrep on our codebase for the first time. It came back with 180 findings. We had no security engineer. The developer who ran it looked at the output, closed the terminal, and we never ran it again. That's not a story about a careless team.

…

Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at DEV.to (Top).

Anonymous · no account needed

Discussion

0 comments