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 v0.13.1 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

vagrant@ubuntu-jammy:/vagrant$

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 list files:

ls -l

total 648
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 22 23:43 3rdparty
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  11358 Mar 18 14:45 LICENSE
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  21821 Mar 27 13:40 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant    133 Mar 18 14:45 NOTICE
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   2643 Mar 29 18:30 RELEASING.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   2238 Mar 22 23:43 Readme.md
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   3337 Mar 22 23:43 Vagrantfile
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 29 18:05 brand
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 22 23:43 builder
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 22 23:43 cmd
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 415013 Mar 28 23:17 coverage.txt
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 18 14:45 deploy
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 29 18:15 dist
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 22 23:43 docs
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant    164 Mar 18 14:45 embedded-ebpf.go
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant    101 Mar 18 14:45 embedded.go
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 27 12:08 examples
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant   5599 Mar 29 17:22 go.mod
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  77170 Mar 29 17:22 go.sum
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant  40206 Mar 22 23:43 mkdocs.yml
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 22 23:43 packaging
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 22 23:43 pkg
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 18 14:45 signatures
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant    157 Mar 22 23:43 staticcheck.conf
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 24 15:44 tests
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant   4096 Mar 22 23:43 types

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

Build and Run Tracee

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

make

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

ls -l dist/

total 161096
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant     4096 Mar 29 19:06 btfhub
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant     4096 Mar 29 19:06 libbpf
drwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant     4096 Mar 29 19:08 signatures
-rwxr-xr-x 1 vagrant vagrant 62619312 Mar 29 19:08 tracee
-rw-r--r-- 1 vagrant vagrant 10753624 Mar 29 19:06 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
19:10:09:453832  0      coredns          1       8       0                security_socket_connect   sockfd: 13, remote_addr: map[sa_family:AF_INET sin_addr:0.0.0.0 sin_port:8080]
19:10:09:454179  0      coredns          1       9       0                security_socket_accept    sockfd: 8, local_addr: map[sa_family:AF_INET6 sin6_addr::: sin6_flowinfo:0 sin6_port:8080 sin6_scopeid:0]
19:10:09:454265  0      coredns          1       9       0                security_socket_accept    sockfd: 8, local_addr: map[sa_family:AF_INET6 sin6_addr::: sin6_flowinfo:0 sin6_port:8080 sin6_scopeid:0]
19:10:09:454478  0      coredns          1       14      0                net_packet_http_request   metadata: {127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 43306 8080 6 144 any}, http_request: &{GET HTTP/1.1 :8080 /health map[Accept-Encoding:[gzip] User-Agent:[Go-http-client/1.1]] 0}
19:10:09:454774  0      coredns          1       14      0                net_packet_http_response  metadata: {127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 8080 43306 6 170 any}, http_response: &{200 OK 200 HTTP/1.1 map[Content-Length:[2] Content-Type:[text/plain; charset=utf-8] Date:[Wed, 29 Mar 2023 19:10:09 GMT]] 2}
19:10:10:452992  0      coredns          1       14      0                security_socket_connect   sockfd: 13, remote_addr: map[sa_family:AF_INET sin_addr:0.0.0.0 sin_port:8080]
19:10:10:453850  0      coredns          1       1       0                security_socket_accept    sockfd: 8, local_addr: map[sa_family:AF_INET6 sin6_addr::: sin6_flowinfo:0 sin6_port:8080 sin6_scopeid:0]
19:10:10:453983  0      coredns          1       1       0                security_socket_accept    sockfd: 8, local_addr: map[sa_family:AF_INET6 sin6_addr::: sin6_flowinfo:0 sin6_port:8080 sin6_scopeid:0]
19:10:10:454612  0      coredns          1       9       0                net_packet_http_request   metadata: {127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 43318 8080 6 144 any}, http_request: &{GET HTTP/1.1 :8080 /health map[Accept-Encoding:[gzip] User-Agent:[Go-http-client/1.1]] 0}
19:10:10:455114  0      coredns          1       9       0                net_packet_http_response  metadata: {127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 8080 43318 6 170 any}, http_response: &{200 OK 200 HTTP/1.1 map[Content-Length:[2] Content-Type:[text/plain; charset=utf-8] Date:[Wed, 29 Mar 2023 19:10:10 GMT]] 2}

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

By default, the development machine is running Ubuntu Linux 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish. 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)
  config.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"       # Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish (CO-RE)
...

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)
  # config.vm.box = "ubuntu/jammy64"     # Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish (CO-RE)
...

This change requires re-provisioning 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 pre-installs 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-jammy   Ready    <none>   40m   v1.26.1   10.0.2.15     <none>        Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS   5.15.0-69-generic   containerd://1.6.8

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:

1. Build the tracee:latest container image from the current Git revision:

   make -f builder/Makefile.tracee-container build-tracee
   

2. 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
   

3. 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 capabilities...
INFO: starting tracee...
{"timestamp":1680119087787203746,"threadStartTime":1680119087787109775,"processorId":0,"processId":95599,"cgroupId":9789,"threadId":95599,"parentProcessId":95597,"hostProcessId":95599,"hostThreadId":95599,"hostParentProcessId":95597,"userId":1000,"mountNamespace":4026531841,"pidNamespace":4026531836,"processName":"strace","hostName":"ubuntu-jammy","containerId":"","containerImage":"","containerName":"","podName":"","podNamespace":"","podUID":"","podSandbox":false,"eventId":"6018","eventName":"Anti-Debugging detected","matchedScopes":1,"argsNum":0,"returnValue":0,"syscall":"","stackAddresses":null,"contextFlags":{"containerStarted":false,"isCompat":false},"args":[],"metadata":{"Version":"1","Description":"A process used anti-debugging techniques to block a debugger. Malware use anti-debugging to stay invisible and inhibit analysis of their behavior.","Tags":null,"Properties":{"Category":"defense-evasion","Kubernetes_Technique":"","Severity":1,"Technique":"Debugger Evasion","external_id":"T1622","id":"attack-pattern--e4dc8c01-417f-458d-9ee0-bb0617c1b391","signatureID":"TRC-102","signatureName":"Anti-Debugging detected"}}}

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

kubectl -n tracee-system logs -f postee-0

2023/03/29 19:44:47 {"timestamp":1680119087787203746,"threadStartTime":1680119087787109775,"processorId":0,"processId":95599,"cgroupId":9789,"threadId":95599,"parentProcessId":95597,"hostProcessId":95599,"hostThreadId":95599,"hostParentProcessId":95597,"userId":1000,"mountNamespace":4026531841,"pidNamespace":4026531836,"processName":"strace","hostName":"ubuntu-jammy","containerId":"","containerImage":"","containerName":"","podName":"","podNamespace":"","podUID":"","podSandbox":false,"eventId":"6018","eventName":"Anti-Debugging detected","matchedScopes":1,"argsNum":0,"returnValue":0,"syscall":"","stackAddresses":null,"contextFlags":{"containerStarted":false,"isCompat":false},"args":[],"metadata":{"Version":"1","Description":"A process used anti-debugging techniques to block a debugger. Malware use anti-debugging to stay invisible and inhibit analysis of their behavior.","Tags":null,"Properties":{"Category":"defense-evasion","Kubernetes_Technique":"","Severity":1,"Technique":"Debugger Evasion","external_id":"T1622","id":"attack-pattern--e4dc8c01-417f-458d-9ee0-bb0617c1b391","signatureID":"TRC-102","signatureName":"Anti-Debugging detected"}}}

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.