Skip to main content

Automatically Scan Your Cluster with Autodiscovery

Introduction​

The secureCodeBox allows you to set up regular scans of your infrastructure using scheduled scans. As the name suggests, these scheduled scans run based on a predefined time interval. However, it can be cumbersome to set this up for your entire infrastructure. If you are operating your infrastructure inside a Kubernetes cluster, there is an easier way to do this: The SCB AutoDiscovery automates the process of setting up scheduled scans by creating scheduled scans for Kubernetes resources inside a cluster.

The AutoDiscovery will observe the scanned Kubernetes resources over their whole lifecycle. It will automatically create, update and delete scans when necessary. Currently, the secureCodeBox AutoDiscovery supports two modes that can be enabled independently: A Service and a Container AutoDiscovery. This tutorial will explain both modes and will give a practical step-by-step example you can follow to get started with them.

Container AutoDiscovery​

The Container AutoDiscovery will create a scheduled scan with the given parameters (see readme for config options) for each unique container image in a Kubernetes namespace. Currently it is only possible to scan public container images.
It is currently disabled by default and must be enabled manually.

Assume that a namespace contains two pods that run a nginx v1.5 container. The Container AutoDiscovery will only create a single scheduled scan for the nginx containers, as both are identical. When a third pod inside the namespace is started running a nginx v1.6 container, the Container AutoDiscovery will create an additional scheduled scan for the nginx v1.6 container, as it is not scanned at this point in time. The Container AutoDiscovery will look at the specific version number of each container when it determines if the container should be scanned. When both nginx v1.5 pods get deleted the corresponding scheduled scans will also be automatically deleted because the specific container image is no longer present in the namespace. The scheduled scan for the nginx v1.6 container will not be deleted, as it is still running in the namespace.

In other words: The Container AutoDiscovery will create a single scheduled scan for each unique container image (taking the specific version number into account) in a given namespace. If a pod consists of multiple containers, the above described logic will be applied to each container individually.

Service AutoDiscovery​

The Service AutoDiscovery will create a scheduled scan with the given parameters (see readme for config options) for each Kubernetes service it detects. (It is possible to scan APIs that require authentication, see the ZAP Advanced documentation). The Service AutoDiscovery is enabled by default but can be disabled manually.

The Service AutoDiscovery will ignore services where the underlying pods do not serve http(s). It does this by checking for open ports 80, 443, 3000, 5000, 8000, 8443, 8080. It is also sufficient to name the ports http or https when a different port is used than the ports specified above. Services without a matching port number or name are currently ignored.

Setup​

For the sake of the tutorial, it will be assumed that a Kubernetes cluster and the SCB operator is already up and running. If not, check out the installation tutorial for more information. This tutorial will use the default and securecodebox-system namespaces.

First install the zap-advanced (for service AutoDiscovery) and trivy (for Container AutoDiscovery) scan types:

helm upgrade --install zap-advanced secureCodeBox/zap-advanced
helm upgrade --install trivy secureCodeBox/trivy

Then install the SCB AutoDiscovery (Container AutoDiscovery is explicitly enabled in this example):

helm upgrade --namespace securecodebox-system --install auto-discovery-kubernetes secureCodeBox/auto-discovery-kubernetes --set config.containerAutoDiscovery.enabled=true

There are three so-called resourceInclusionModes. These control which resources the AutoDiscovery will scan.

  • enabled-per-namespace (default)
  • enabled-per-resource
  • all (scans every service and/ or container in the whole cluster!)

Depending on the resourceInclusionMode one has to annotate each namespace or Kubernetes resource for which the AutoDiscovery should be enabled. If scan-all is used nothing has to be annotated as everything will be scanned. This tutorial will use enabled-per-namespace as ressourceInclusionMode which is the default. Annotate the default namespace to enable the AutoDiscovery feature for the namespace.

kubectl annotate namespace default auto-discovery.securecodebox.io/enabled=true

Then install juice-shop as a demo target:

helm upgrade --install juice-shop secureCodeBox/juice-shop

The AutoDiscovery will create two scheduled scans after some time. One for the juice-shop service using zap, and one for the juice-shop container using trivy:

$ kubectl get scheduledscans
NAME                                                             TYPE                INTERVAL   FINDINGS
juice-shop-service-port-3000                                     zap-advanced-scan   168h0m0s
scan-juice-shop-at-350cf9a6ea37138b987a3968d046e61bcd3bb18d2ec   trivy               168h0m0s

Install a second juice-shop into the namespace:

helm upgrade --install juice-shop2 secureCodeBox/juice-shop

The AutoDiscovery will then create a second zap scan for the service, but no additional trivy container scan, as the juice-shop container is already being scanned.

$ kubectl get scheduledscans
NAME                                                             TYPE                INTERVAL   FINDINGS
juice-shop-service-port-3000                                     zap-advanced-scan   168h0m0s
juice-shop2-service-port-3000                                    zap-advanced-scan   168h0m0s
scan-juice-shop-at-350cf9a6ea37138b987a3968d046e61bcd3bb18d2ec   trivy               168h0m0s

Delete both juice-shop deployments.

kubectl delete deployment,service juice-shop juice-shop2

After some time all scheduled scans will be automatically deleted.

$ kubectl get scheduledscans
No resources found in default namespace.

Config​

The scanType and scan parameters can be changed by providing containerAutodiscovery.scanConfig.scanType and containerAutodiscovery.scanConfig.parameters (replace containerAutodiscovery with serviceAutodiscovery to change scanType and scan parameters for the service AutoDiscovery). The scan parameters support go templating extended with sprig. An example for go templating would be the default parameters for the Container AutoDiscovery: {{ .ImageID }}. ImageID is the imageID of the scanned container, example: docker.io/bkimminich/juice-shop@sha256:350cf9a6ea37138b987a3968d046e61bcd3bb18d2ec95290cfc6901bd6013826

All config options are automatically updated in the readme in the Github repository.