Writing Custom Configuration Audit Policies¶

Starboard ships with a set of Built-in Configuration Audit Policies defined as OPA Rego policies. You can also define custom policies and associate them with applicable Kubernetes resources to extend basic configuration audit functionality.

This tutorial will walk through the process of creating and testing a new configuration audit policy that fails whenever a Kubernetes resource doesn't specify app.kubernetes.io/name or app.kubernetes.io/version labels.

Writing a Policy¶

To define such a policy, you must first define its metadata. This includes setting a unique identifier, title, severity (CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW), descriptive text, and remediation steps. In Rego it's defined as the __rego_metadata__ rule, which defines the following composite value:

package starboard.policy.k8s.custom

__rego_metadata__ := {
    "id": "recommended_labels",
    "title": "Recommended labels",
    "severity": "LOW",
    "type": "Kubernetes Security Check",
    "description": "A common set of labels allows tools to work interoperably, describing objects in a common manner that all tools can understand.",
    "recommended_actions": "Take full advantage of using recommended labels and apply them on every resource object.",
    "url": "https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/working-with-objects/common-labels/",
}

Note that the recommended_labels policy in scoped to the starboard.policy.k8s.custom package to avoid naming collision with built-in policies that are pre-installed with Starboard.

Once we've got our metadata defined, we need to create the logic of the policy, which is done in the deny or warn rule.

recommended_labels := [
    "app.kubernetes.io/name",
    "app.kubernetes.io/version",
]

deny[res] {
    provided := {label | input.metadata.labels[label]}
    required := {label | label := recommended_labels[_]}
    missing := required - provided
    count(missing) > 0
    msg := sprintf("You must provide labels: %v", [missing])
    res := {"msg": msg}
}

These matches are essentially Rego assertions, so anyone familiar with writing rules for OPA or other tools that use Rego should find the process familiar. In this case, it’s pretty straightforward. We subtract the set of labels specified by the input resource object from the set of recommended labels. The resulting set is stored in the variable called missing. Finally, we check if the missing set is empty. If not, the deny rule fails with the appropriate message.

The input document is set by Starboard to a Kubernetes resource when the policy is evaluated. For pods, it would look something like the following listing:

{
  "apiVersion": "v1",
  "kind": "Pod",
  "metadata": {
    "name": "nginx",
    "labels": {
      "run": "nginx"
    }
  },
  "spec": {
    "containers": [
      {
        "name": "nginx",
        "image": "nginx:1.16",
      }
    ]
  }
}

The labels set on the pod resource above can be retrieved with the following Rego expression:

provided := {label | input.metadata.labels[label]}

You can find the complete Rego code listing in recommended_labels.rego.

Testing a Policy¶

Now that you've created the policy, you need to test it to make sure it works as intended. To do that, add policy code to the starboard-policies-config ConfigMap and associate it with any (*) Kubernetes resource kind:

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: starboard-policies-config
  namespace: starboard-system
  labels:
    app.kubernetes.io/name: starboard-operator
    app.kubernetes.io/instance: starboard-operator
    app.kubernetes.io/version: "0.15.23"
    app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: kubectl
data:
  policy.recommended_labels.kinds: "*"
  policy.recommended_labels.rego: |
    package starboard.policy.k8s.custom

    __rego_metadata__ := {
        "id": "recommended_labels",
        "title": "Recommended labels",
        "severity": "LOW",
        "type": "Kubernetes Security Check",
        "description": "A common set of labels allows tools to work interoperably, describing objects in a common manner that all tools can understand",
        "recommended_actions": "Take full advantage of using recommended labels and apply them on every resource object.",
        "url": "https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/working-with-objects/common-labels/",
    }

    recommended_labels := [
        "app.kubernetes.io/name",
        "app.kubernetes.io/version",
    ]

    deny[res] {
        provided := {label | input.metadata.labels[label]}
        required := {label | label := recommended_labels[_]}
        missing := required - provided
        count(missing) > 0
        msg := sprintf("You must provide labels: %v", [missing])
        res := {"msg": msg}
    }

In this example, to add a new policy, you must define two data entries in the starboard-policies-config ConfigMap:

The policy.<your_policy_name>.kinds entry is used to designate applicable Kubernetes resources as a comma separated list of Kubernetes kinds (e.g., Pod,ConfigMap,NetworkPolicy). There is also a special value (Workload) that you can use to select all Kubernetes workloads, and (*) to select all Kubernetes resources recognized by Starboard.
The policy.<your_policy_name>.rego entry holds the policy Rego code.

Starboard automatically detects policies added to the starboard-policies-config ConfigMap and immediately rescans applicable Kubernetes resources.

Let's create the test ConfigMap without recommended labels:

$ kubectl create cm test --from-literal=foo=bar
configmap/test created

When you retrieve the corresponding configuration audit report, you'll see that there is one check with LOW severity that's failing:

$ kubectl get configauditreport configmap-test -o wide
NAME             SCANNER     AGE   CRITICAL  HIGH   MEDIUM   LOW
configmap-test   Starboard   24s   0         0      0        1

If you describe the report you'll see that it's failing because of our custom policy:

apiVersion: aquasecurity.github.io/v1alpha1
kind: ConfigAuditReport
metadata:
  labels:
    starboard.resource.kind: ConfigMap
    starboard.resource.name: test
    starboard.resource.namespace: default
    plugin-config-hash: df767ff5f
    resource-spec-hash: 7c96769cf
  name: configmap-test
  namespace: default
  ownerReferences:
  - apiVersion: v1
    blockOwnerDeletion: false
    controller: true
    kind: ConfigMap
    name: test
report:
  scanner:
    name: Starboard
    vendor: Aqua Security
    version: v0.15.23
  summary:
    criticalCount: 0
    highCount: 0
    lowCount: 1
    mediumCount: 0
  checks:
  - checkID: recommended_labels  # (1)
    title: Recommended labels    # (2)
    severity: LOW                # (3)
    category: Kubernetes Security Check  # (4)
    description: |                       # (5)
      A common set of labels allows tools to work interoperably,
      describing objects in a common manner that all tools can
      understand.
    success: false  # (6)
    messages:       # (7)
    - 'You must provide labels: {"app.kubernetes.io/name", "app.kubernetes.io/version"}'

The checkID property corresponds to the policy identifier, i.e. __rego_meatadata__.id.
The title property as defined by the policy metadata in __rego_metadata__.title.
The severity property as defined by the policy metadata in __rego_metadata__.severity.
The category property as defined by the policy metadata in __rego_metadata__.type.
The description property as defined by the policy metadata in __rego_metadata__.description.
The flag indicating whether the configuration audit check has failed or passed.
The array of messages with details in case of failure.