When Your Scanner Flags a Deprecated Package: What to Do Next

Security scanners are fast. Your engineering team isn’t slow—but the pace of modern software development, the complexity of transitive dependencies, and the brittleness of legacy code often mean one thing: sooner or later, your tools will flag a package your team didn’t even know was a problem.

The most common? Deprecated or end-of-life (EOL) open source libraries.

It’s a situation we hear about every day at HeroDevs:

• Your security scanner flags a package like .NET, Spring, AngularJS, or Node.js 
• The library is still in active use across services or internal apps
• The official project has sunsetted support
• There’s no patch available upstream, and your team doesn’t have bandwidth to migrate

You’re stuck. The alert is valid. The urgency is real. But the path forward is unclear.

This blog outlines how to respond when a scanner identifies unsupported open source in your stack—and how Never-Ending Support from HeroDevs helps you turn “panic mode” into a repeatable, sustainable response strategy.

‍

What Just Happened: Understanding the Alert

Modern scanners—like Snyk, Mend, Black Duck, and Trivy—do more than detect known vulnerabilities. They also inspect license type, component age, and project health. So even if a library has no known CVEs, your scanner may flag it as a risk if:

• It has reached official end-of-life
• There have been no commits or releases in a set time window
• No patching activity has been observed since a previously published CVE
• It exists as a dependency of another package that is itself unsupported

This can cause confusion: if there are no open CVEs, why is the scanner sounding the alarm?

The answer is simple: the library is unsupported, and future CVEs won’t be patched. From a risk perspective, that’s a time bomb waiting to go off.

Security tools are flagging these components now because:

• They fail modern compliance controls (e.g., “actively supported software” clauses in SOC 2, ISO 27001)
• Their continued use violates risk acceptance policies
• They can introduce transitive risk into vendor pipelines, internal apps, or customer environments

If your scanner says “deprecated,” you can no longer assume “safe.”

‍

Why “Just Upgrade” Often Isn’t Feasible

In a perfect world, your team would simply migrate to a supported version. But in reality, upgrading a core library isn’t always that simple—or fast.

Here’s why we see teams struggle with upgrades:

• Critical systems rely on legacy behaviors: Upgrading breaks core functionality.
• Migrations involve API and contract changes: The upgrade isn’t backward-compatible.
• Internal expertise has moved on: The engineers who built the original implementation may have left.
• The migration path is undefined or untested: There’s no official or community-supported path forward.
• You have more urgent priorities: Engineering focus is elsewhere, and a reactive rewrite derails the roadmap.

The result is what we call the compliance trap: your software works, but it’s noncompliant. Fixing it will take months. But ignoring it isn’t acceptable.

‍

Step-by-Step: What to Do When a Scanner Flags EOL OSS

If your scanner flags a deprecated or unsupported OSS component, here’s how to respond in a structured, audit-safe way:

Triage the Alert

• Is the component directly used by your application, or is it a transitive dependency?
• Is the flagged version currently in production or only in CI/testing environments?
• Is there a known vulnerability associated with the flagged package?

Check Official Support Status

• Has the project published an end-of-life timeline?
• Are security patches still being released for the version in question?
• Can you verify this through the project’s GitHub repo, foundation documentation, or release schedule?

Determine Business Impact

• Would upgrading introduce regression risk?
• Would a migration require changes to multiple systems?
• Is this component embedded in customer-facing systems, internal tooling, or build pipelines?

Decide Between Three Paths

• Upgrade: If the path is well-documented, testable, and low-risk
• Replace: If the dependency is easily substituted or modular
• Extend support: If the system is stable and migration would be disruptive

This third path—securely extending support for the existing version—is often the most practical. And that’s where HeroDevs comes in.

‍

How HeroDevs Responds to Scanner-Flagged Risk

When your security scanner flags an EOL OSS component, HeroDevs offers a fully supported path forward:

Never-Ending Support (NES) Includes:

• SLA-backed CVE remediation: We monitor, triage, and patch known vulnerabilities within defined timeframes (typically 14 days).
• Security update delivery: Our patches are production-tested, installable, and version-aligned.
• Audit documentation: HeroDevs provides patch reports and security attestations you can submit during SOC 2, ISO, and vendor reviews.
• Compliance coverage: NES ensures that the flagged component is no longer “unsupported,” even if it is technically EOL upstream.

With NES in place, your scanner may still flag a package as “deprecated”—but you’ll have a signed security contract, a documented update trail, and active patching coverage.

That’s the difference between “unsupported” and “professionally supported.”

‍

From Fire Drill to Playbook

Security teams shouldn’t have to scramble every time a scanner alert hits. By integrating NES into your open source governance strategy, you move from reactive triage to proactive lifecycle planning.

With HeroDevs, you can:

• Remediate flagged OSS without immediate replatforming
• Meet audit requirements without pausing development
• Extend the life of stable systems until your roadmap supports modernization
• Turn security alerts into structured, defensible workflows

‍

Final Thought: Don’t Let Scanners Set Your Roadmap

When a scanner flags a deprecated package, it’s not telling you to rebuild—it’s telling you to respond.

With HeroDevs, that response doesn’t have to mean disruption, delay, or duct-tape patches. It can mean stability, compliance, and room to breathe.

You still own your roadmap. We just help you keep it secure.

‍