Why are SBOMs failing to stop supply chain attacks?

Software bills of materials (SBOMs) are intended to improve software supply chain security by documenting a program’s components, origins, and creators, particularly when combined with signed attestations that can verify integrity and provenance. Their adoption and effectiveness remain limited by inconsistent developer-tool support, the need for organizations to independently validate developer-provided SBOMs through image scanning and policy enforcement, and the fact that vulnerability data quickly becomes outdated as new flaws emerge. SBOMs also cannot reliably address insider threats or malicious code introduced by trusted contributors, such as the XZ Utils backdoor, which may require dynamic analysis and AI-assisted detection. The discussion argues that SBOMs should be treated as one part of a broader security process involving continuous scanning, CI/CD and Kubernetes controls, signed attestations, shared findings, and potentially regulation to establish stronger accountability across the software supply chain.

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