Gradle, with it's transitive dependency modifications is a huge pain in this area.

It used to be that if a library ended up having a flaw then it would be flagged and we would get the dependency updated. These days security block the "security risk" and you have to replace your dependencies dependency. Fingers crossed you can get it to actually test all the code paths.

If an second level project gets a flaw, and it's used indirectly then we should really look at getting the import updated so that we know it works. If that import is abandoned then we should not be updating that second level dependency, either adopt and fix the first level dependency or look at an alternative.