Setup Development Machine with Vagrant¶

HashiCorp Vagrant leverages a declarative configuration file, which describes all software requirements, packages, operating system configuration, and users to provide the same development environment for everyone.

The Vagrantfile describes the type of machine required to build Tracee from source and follow the Getting Started guides. This allows developers involved in the project to check out the code, run vagrant up, and be on their way.

Prerequisites¶

Vagrant
Hypervisor supported by Vagrant, such as VirtualBox.

Create Development Machine¶

Clone and change directory to Tracee Git repository:

git clone --branch v0.12.0 https://github.com/aquasecurity/tracee.git
cd tracee

Create and configure development machine according to the Vagrantfile:

vagrant up

If everything goes well, you can SSH into a running development machine and access its shell:

$ vagrant ssh
Welcome to Ubuntu 21.10 (GNU/Linux 5.13.0-35-generic x86_64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/advantage

  System information as of Sat Mar 26 18:08:08 UTC 2022

  System load:  0.94               Processes:                153
  Usage of /:   14.7% of 38.71GB   Users logged in:          1
  Memory usage: 59%                IPv4 address for docker0: 172.17.0.1
  Swap usage:   0%                 IPv4 address for enp0s3:  10.0.2.15


9 updates can be applied immediately.
9 of these updates are standard security updates.
To see these additional updates run: apt list --upgradable


Last login: Sat Mar 26 17:14:16 2022 from 10.0.2.2
vagrant@ubuntu-impish:~$

Tip

Provisioning from scratch take time, but once created you can reuse the machine with vagrant halt and vagrant up commands. If something goes wrong with your machine, there's also the vagrant destroy to destroy it and start over again.

Synced folders enable Vagrant to sync a folder on the host machine to the development machine, allowing you to continue working on your project's files on your host machine, but use the resources in the development machine to compile or run Tracee.

By default, Vagrant will share Tracee project directory (the directory with the Vagrantfile) to /vagrant. To get started, change directory to /vagrant and list files:

$ ls -l
total 204
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    224 Mar 17 14:31 3rdparty
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   3474 Mar 17 14:31 CONTRIBUTING.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  11358 Mar 17 14:31 LICENSE
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  16529 Mar 25 07:46 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant    133 Mar 17 14:31 NOTICE
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   2116 Mar 26 16:41 RELEASING.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   4097 Mar 17 14:31 Readme.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   2732 Mar 26 16:41 Vagrantfile
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    384 Mar 26 16:41 builder
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    128 Dec 14 15:27 cmd
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant     96 Dec  8 14:20 deploy
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    288 Mar 25 10:51 dist
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    448 Mar 26 16:44 docs
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant    164 Mar 17 14:31 embedded-ebpf.go
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant    101 Mar 17 14:31 embedded.go
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   4382 Mar 24 14:13 go.mod
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 129439 Mar 24 14:13 go.sum
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   1546 Mar 26 18:20 mkdocs.yml
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    256 Mar 22 14:08 packaging
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    416 Mar 24 14:13 pkg
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    192 Dec 14 13:02 signatures
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    160 Mar 24 14:13 tests
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant    224 Mar 24 11:59 types

As you can see the /vagrant directory contains source code of Tracee cloned from GitHub.

Build and Run Tracee-eBPF and Tracee-Rules¶

To build tracee executable binary, run the default make target:

make

Build targets are saved in the /vagrant/dist directory:

$ ls -l dist/
total 47972
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant       96 Mar 25 10:45 btfhub
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant      224 Mar 25 10:45 libbpf
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant      512 Mar 25 10:46 rules
-rwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 17876784 Mar 26 18:32 tracee
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant      544 Mar 26 18:31 tracee.bpf
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  4232032 Mar 26 18:31 tracee.bpf.core.o

You can now run Tracee and see events printed to the standard output in a tabular format:

$ sudo ./dist/tracee
TIME             UID    COMM             PID     TID     RET              EVENT                ARGS
18:39:43:781824  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                stat                 pathname: /docs/docs, statbuf: 0x7f851365eb20
18:39:43:782125  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                security_file_open   pathname: /docs/docs, flags: O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE|O_DIRECTORY, dev: 43, inode: 47, ctime: 1648313072000000000
18:39:43:782008  0      mkdocs           1       19      6                open                 pathname: /docs/docs, flags: O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC, mode: 0
18:39:43:783200  0      mkdocs           1       19      464              getdents64           fd: 6, dirp: 0x7f8513d8e0b8, count: 2048
18:39:43:783232  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                getdents64           fd: 6, dirp: 0x7f8513d8e0b8, count: 2048
18:39:43:783259  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                close                fd: 6
18:39:43:783271  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                stat                 pathname: /docs/docs/architecture.md, statbuf: 0x7f851365e9b0
18:39:43:783734  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                stat                 pathname: /docs/docs/install, statbuf: 0x7f851365e9b0
18:39:43:784163  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                stat                 pathname: /docs/docs/images, statbuf: 0x7f851365e9b0
18:39:43:784589  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                stat                 pathname: /docs/docs/integrations.md, statbuf: 0x7f851365e9b0
18:39:43:784906  0      mkdocs           1       19      0                stat                 pathname: /docs/docs/faq.md, statbuf: 0x7f851365e9b0

Switch Between CO-RE and non CO-RE Linux Distribution¶

By default, the development machine is running Ubuntu Linux 21.10 Impish Indri. You can see that it has a BTF-enabled kernel by checking the existence of the /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux file.

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  # config.vm.box = "ubuntu/focal64"     # Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa (non CO-RE)
  # config.vm.box = "ubuntu/hirsute64"   # Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo (CO-RE)
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/impish64"      # Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri (CO-RE)
end

Sometimes you may want to test Tracee with a non CO-RE distribution. You can do that by editing the Vagrantfile and modifying the config.vm.box property. For example, you can switch to Ubuntu Linux 20.04 Focal Fossa as follows:

Vagrant.configure("2") do |config|
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/focal64"       # Ubuntu 20.04 Focal Fossa (non CO-RE)
  # config.vm.box = "ubuntu/hirsute64"   # Ubuntu 21.04 Hirsute Hippo (CO-RE)
  # config.vm.box = "ubuntu/impish64"    # Ubuntu 21.10 Impish Indri (CO-RE)
end

This change requires reprovisioning the development machine:

vagrant destroy
vagrant up

Attention

Ubuntu Focal distribution has introduced BTF information to their recent kernels, allowing eBPF CO-RE capable code to run. If you're willing to test non CO-RE kernels, make sure to use an older kernel that does not provide the /sys/kernel/btf/vmlinux file.

Deploy Tracee with Postee on Kubernetes¶

The development machine described by Vagrantfile preinstalls MicroK8s Kubernetes cluster, which is suitable for testing Tracee.

$ microk8s status
microk8s is running
high-availability: no
  datastore master nodes: 127.0.0.1:19001
  datastore standby nodes: none

There's also the kubectl command installed and configured to communicate with the cluster:

$ kubectl get nodes -o wide
NAME            STATUS   ROLES    AGE    VERSION                    INTERNAL-IP   EXTERNAL-IP   OS-IMAGE       KERNEL-VERSION      CONTAINER-RUNTIME
ubuntu-impish   Ready    <none>   139m   v1.23.4-2+98fc2022f3ad3e   10.0.2.15     <none>        Ubuntu 21.10   5.13.0-35-generic   containerd://1.5.9

Create a new namespace called tracee-system:

kubectl create ns tracee-system

Create Postee Persistent Volumes and StatefulSet in the tracee-system namespace:

kubectl apply -n tracee-system \
  -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aquasecurity/postee/v2.2.0/deploy/kubernetes/hostPath/postee-pv.yaml \
  -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/aquasecurity/postee/v2.2.0/deploy/kubernetes/postee.yaml

Create Tracee DaemonSet in the tracee-system, which is preconfigured to print detections to the standard output and send them over to Postee webhook on http://postee-svc:8082:

kubectl apply -n tracee-system -f deploy/kubernetes/tracee-postee/tracee.yaml

Tip

To test code that hasn't been released yet do the following:

Build the tracee:latest container image from the current Git revision:
```
make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-container build-tracee
```

Import the container image to MicroK8s registry:

docker image save -o /tmp/tracee-latest.tar tracee:latest
microk8s ctr images import /tmp/tracee-latest.tar
rm /tmp/tracee-latest.tar

Create Tracee DaemonSet using tracee:latest as container image:

kubectl apply -n tracee-system -k deploy/kubernetes/tracee-postee

While Tracee pod is running, run strace ls command and observe detection printed to the standard output.

$ kubectl logs n tracee-system -f daemonset/tracee
INFO: probing tracee-ebpf capabilities...
INFO: starting tracee-ebpf...
INFO: starting tracee-rules...
Loaded 14 signature(s): [TRC-1 TRC-13 TRC-2 TRC-14 TRC-3 TRC-11 TRC-9 TRC-4 TRC-5 TRC-12 TRC-8 TRC-6 TRC-10 TRC-7]
Serving metrics endpoint at :3366

*** Detection ***
Time: 2022-03-29T08:26:32Z
Signature ID: TRC-2
Signature: Anti-Debugging
Data: map[]
Command: strace
Hostname: ubuntu-impish

If everything is configured properly, you can find the same detection in Postee logs:

$ kubectl -n tracee-system logs -f postee-0
2022/03/29 08:26:32 {"Data":null,"Context":{"timestamp":1648542392170684298,"processorId":1,"processId":90731,"threadId"
:90731,"parentProcessId":90729,"hostProcessId":90731,"hostThreadId":90731,"hostParentProcessId":90729,"userId":1000,"mou
ntNamespace":4026531840,"pidNamespace":4026531836,"processName":"strace","hostName":"ubuntu-impish","containerId":"","ev
entId":"101","eventName":"ptrace","argsNum":4,"returnValue":0,"stackAddresses":null,"syscall":"ptrace","contextFlags":{"
containerStarted":false,"isCompat":false},"args":[{"name":"request","type":"string","value":"PTRACE_TRACEME"},{"name":"p
id","type":"pid_t","value":0},{"name":"addr","type":"void*","value":"0x0"},{"name":"data","type":"void*","value":"0x0"}]
},"SigMetadata":{"ID":"TRC-2","Version":"0.1.0","Name":"Anti-Debugging","Description":"Process uses anti-debugging techn
ique to block debugger","Tags":["linux","container"],"Properties":{"MITRE ATT\u0026CK":"Defense Evasion: Execution Guard
rails","Severity":3}}}

As an alternative to static deployment descriptors you can install Tracee and Postee with Helm:

helm repo add aqua https://aquasecurity.github.io/helm-charts
helm dependency update ./deploy/helm/tracee
helm install tracee ./deploy/helm/tracee \
  --namespace tracee-system --create-namespace \
  --set hostPID=true \
  --set postee.enabled=true

Access Kubernetes Dashboard¶

Use the following command to get the token required to log in to the Kubernetes Dashboard:

kubectl -n kube-system describe secret \
  $(kubectl -n kube-system get secret | grep default-token | cut -d " " -f1)

Forward port 10443 in the development machine to the Kubernetes Dashboard's pod:

kubectl port-forward --address 0.0.0.0 -n kube-system service/kubernetes-dashboard 10443:443

Since port 10443 is forwarded to port 10443 on your host, you can open your browser to https://localhost:10443 and access Kubernetes Dashboard.

Warning

Modern browser usually block insecure localhost TLS connections. For Google Chrome you may allow insecure TLS connections at chrome://flags/#allow-insecure-localhost.

Preview Tracee Documentation¶

You can run MkDocs server and preview documentation on your host:

make -f builder/Makefile.mkdocs

The development machine is running the MkDocs server listening on port 8000, which is forwarded to port 8000 on your host. Therefore, you can open your browser to http://localhost:8000 and access documentation pages.