It is now a requirement for clusters to run Kubernetes >=1.19.

override labels with unregistered kubernetes.io annotations will be deprecated. It'll soon be a requirement to use kubeaudit.io instead. Refer to this discussion for additional context.

🚨 Deprecation Notice 🚨

Kubeaudit is planned for deprecation by October 2024.

We are actively seeking maintainers who are interested in taking over the stewardship of this project. If you are passionate about continuing its development and maintenance, please reach out to us.

For users looking for alternatives, we recommend transitioning to Kubebench, which offers similar functionality and is actively maintained.

Thank you to the community for your contributions and support.

kubeaudit ☁️ 🔒 💪

kubeaudit is a command line tool and a Go package to audit Kubernetes clusters for various different security concerns, such as:

• run as non-root
• use a read-only root filesystem
• drop scary capabilities, don't add new ones
• don't run privileged
• and more!

tldr. kubeaudit makes sure you deploy secure containers!

Package

To use kubeaudit as a Go package, see the package docs.

The rest of this README will focus on how to use kubeaudit as a command line tool.

Command Line Interface (CLI)

• Installation
• Quick Start
• Audit Results
• Commands
• Configuration File
• Override Errors
• Contributing

Installation

Brew

brew install kubeaudit

Download a binary

Kubeaudit has official releases that are blessed and stable: Official releases

DIY build

Main may have newer features than the stable releases. If you need a newer feature not yet included in a release, make sure you're using the latest Go and run the following:

go get -v github.com/Shopify/kubeaudit

Start using kubeaudit with the Quick Start or view all the supported commands.

Kubectl Plugin

Prerequisite: kubectl v1.12.0 or later

With kubectl v1.12.0 introducing easy pluggability of external functions, kubeaudit can be invoked as kubectl audit by

• running make plugin and having $GOPATH/bin available in your path.

or

• renaming the binary to kubectl-audit and having it available in your path.

Docker

We no longer release images to Docker Hub (since Docker Hub sunset Free Team organizations). For the time being, old images are still available but may stop being available at any time. We will start publishing images to the Github Container registry soon.

To run kubeaudit as a job in your cluster see Running kubeaudit in a cluster.

Quick Start

kubeaudit has three modes:

1. Manifest mode
2. Local mode
3. Cluster mode

Manifest Mode

If a Kubernetes manifest file is provided using the -f/--manifest flag, kubeaudit will audit the manifest file.

Example command:

kubeaudit all -f "/path/to/manifest.yml"

Example output:

$ kubeaudit all -f "internal/test/fixtures/all_resources/deployment-apps-v1.yml"

---------------- Results for ---------------

  apiVersion: apps/v1
  kind: Deployment
  metadata:
    name: deployment
    namespace: deployment-apps-v1

--------------------------------------------

-- [error] AppArmorAnnotationMissing
   Message: AppArmor annotation missing. The annotation 'container.apparmor.security.beta.kubernetes.io/container' should be added.
   Metadata:
      Container: container
      MissingAnnotation: container.apparmor.security.beta.kubernetes.io/container

-- [error] AutomountServiceAccountTokenTrueAndDefaultSA
   Message: Default service account with token mounted. automountServiceAccountToken should be set to 'false' or a non-default service account should be used.

-- [error] CapabilityShouldDropAll
   Message: Capability not set to ALL. Ideally, you should drop ALL capabilities and add the specific ones you need to the add list.
   Metadata:
      Container: container
      Capability: AUDIT_WRITE
...

If no errors with a given minimum severity are found, the following is returned:

All checks completed. 0 high-risk vulnerabilities found

Autofix

Manifest mode also supports autofixing all security issues using the autofix command:

kubeaudit autofix -f "/path/to/manifest.yml"

To write the fixed manifest to a new file instead of modifying the source file, use the -o/--output flag.

kubeaudit autofix -f "/path/to/manifest.yml" -o "/path/to/fixed"

To fix a manifest based on custom rules specified on a kubeaudit config file, use the -k/--kconfig flag.

kubeaudit autofix -k "/path/to/kubeaudit-config.yml" -f "/path/to/manifest.yml" -o "/path/to/fixed"

Cluster Mode

Kubeaudit can detect if it is running within a container in a cluster. If so, it will try to audit all Kubernetes resources in that cluster:

kubeaudit all

Local Mode

Kubeaudit will try to connect to a cluster using the local kubeconfig file ($HOME/.kube/config). A different kubeconfig location can be specified using the --kubeconfig flag. To specify a context of the kubeconfig, use the -c/--context flag.

kubeaudit all --kubeconfig "/path/to/config" --context my_cluster

For more information on kubernetes config files, see https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/organize-cluster-access-kubeconfig/

Audit Results

Kubeaudit produces results with three levels of severity:

• Error: A security issue or invalid kubernetes configuration
• Warning: A best practice recommendation
• Info: Informational, no action required. This includes results that are overridden

The minimum severity level can be set using the --minSeverity/-m flag.

By default kubeaudit will output results in a human-readable way. If the output is intended to be further processed, it can be set to output JSON using the --format json flag. To output results as logs (the previous default) use --format logrus. Some output formats include colors to make results easier to read in a terminal. To disable colors (for example, if you are sending output to a text file), you can use the --no-color flag.

You can generate a kubeaudit report in SARIF using the --format sarif flag. To write the SARIF results to a file, you can redirect the output with >. For example:

kubeaudit all -f path-to-my-file.yaml --format="sarif" > example.sarif

If there are results of severity level error, kubeaudit will exit with exit code 2. This can be changed using the --exitcode/-e flag.

For all the ways kubeaudit can be customized, see Global Flags.

Commands