Interview Security & DevSecOps

How do you handle false positives in SonarQube? [Basic]

Answer

I handle false positives by validating the finding, documenting why it is not exploitable, marking it appropriately in SonarQube, and tuning rules only when the pattern is repeatedly noisy. I avoid blanket suppression because that hides real issues.

Technical explanation

False positives should be reviewed by someone with enough context to understand the code path and threat model.

Use issue workflow states, comments, or targeted suppression with justification rather than disabling rules globally.

If a rule creates excessive noise across many teams, adjust the quality profile centrally and communicate the reason.

Hands-on example

Hands-on: for a flagged SQL injection that uses a safe query builder, attach evidence in the issue, mark it false positive or accepted as configured, and add a unit test showing parameter binding. Keep the rule enabled for raw SQL concatenation cases.

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