Scanning AWS Lambda for Vulnerabilities with Amazon Inspector

Recently completed a hands-on lab on using Amazon Inspector to scan AWS Lambda functions for vulnerabilities — here's a quick summary.

The Scenario

A team is building a new application using AWS Lambda and needs an automated way to catch vulnerabilities — not just in dependencies, but within the code itself, right after every deployment.

What I Did

1. Activated Amazon Inspector

• Navigated to Amazon Inspector in the AWS Console
• Activated the service for the account, which automatically enabled scanning for EC2, ECR, and AWS Lambda
• Waited until the dashboard showed Lambda function coverage at 100%

2. Reviewed the Findings

• Opened "All findings" and found three vulnerabilities reported at Medium severity
• Selected the finding CVE-2023-32681 - requests
• Checked the Vulnerability details, including a link to the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) for more context
• Reviewed the Remediation section, which flagged the requests package as outdated and recommended an upgrade

3. Remediated the Vulnerability

• Opened the affected Lambda function (get-request) in the Lambda console
• Edited the requirements.txt file, removing the pinned version (requests==2.20.0) so it just read requests — ensuring the latest secure version installs automatically
• Deployed the updated function