Skip to content

Kubernetes

EXPERIMENTAL

This feature might change without preserving backwards compatibility.

The Trivy K8s CLI allows you to scan your Kubernetes cluster for Vulnerabilities, Secrets and Misconfigurations. You can either run the CLI locally or integrate it into your CI/CD pipeline. The difference to the Trivy CLI is that the Trivy K8s CLI allows you to scan running workloads directly within your cluster.

If you are looking for continuous cluster audit scanning, have a look at the Trivy K8s operator.

Trivy uses your local kubectl configuration to access the API server to list artifacts.

CLI Commands

Scan a full cluster and generate a simple summary report:

$ trivy k8s --report=summary cluster

k8s Summary Report

The summary report is the default. To get all of the detail the output contains, use --report all.

Filter by severity:

$ trivy k8s --severity=CRITICAL --report=all cluster

Filter by security check (Vulnerabilities, Secrets or Misconfigurations):

$ trivy k8s --security-checks=secret --report=summary cluster
# or
$ trivy k8s --security-checks=config --report=summary cluster

Scan a specific namespace:

$ trivy k8s -n kube-system --report=summary all

Use a specific kubeconfig file:

$ trivy k8s --kubeconfig ~/.kube/config2 -n kube-system --report=summary all

Scan a specific resource and get all the output:

$ trivy k8s deployment appname

Scan all deploys, or deploys and configmaps:

$ trivy k8s --report=summary deployment
$ trivy k8s --report=summary deployment,configmaps

If you want to pass in flags before scanning specific workloads, you will have to do it before the resource name. For example, scanning a deployment in the app namespace of your Kubernetes cluster for critical vulnerabilities would be done through the following command:

$ trivy k8s -n app --severity=CRITICAL deployment/appname
This is specific to all Trivy CLI commands.

The supported formats are table, which is the default, and json. To get a JSON output on a full cluster scan:

$ trivy k8s --format json -o results.json cluster
Result
{
  "ClusterName": "minikube",
  "Vulnerabilities": [
    {
      "Namespace": "default",
      "Kind": "Deployment",
      "Name": "app",
      "Results": [
        {
          "Target": "ubuntu:latest (ubuntu 22.04)",
          "Class": "os-pkgs",
          "Type": "ubuntu",
          "Vulnerabilities": [
            {
              "VulnerabilityID": "CVE-2016-2781",
              "PkgName": "coreutils",
              "InstalledVersion": "8.32-4.1ubuntu1",
              "Layer": {
                "Digest": "sha256:125a6e411906fe6b0aaa50fc9d600bf6ff9bb11a8651727ce1ed482dc271c24c",
                "DiffID": "sha256:e59fc94956120a6c7629f085027578e6357b48061d45714107e79f04a81a6f0c"
              },
              "SeveritySource": "ubuntu",
              "PrimaryURL": "https://avd.aquasec.com/nvd/cve-2016-2781",
              "DataSource": {
                "ID": "ubuntu",
                "Name": "Ubuntu CVE Tracker",
                "URL": "https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu-cve-tracker"
              },
              "Title": "coreutils: Non-privileged session can escape to the parent session in chroot",
              "Description": "chroot in GNU coreutils, when used with --userspec, allows local users to escape to the parent session via a crafted TIOCSTI ioctl call, which pushes characters to the terminal's input buffer.",
              "Severity": "LOW",
              "CweIDs": [
                "CWE-20"
              ],
              "VendorSeverity": {
                "cbl-mariner": 2,
                "nvd": 2,
                "redhat": 2,
                "ubuntu": 1
              },
              "CVSS": {
                "nvd": {
                  "V2Vector": "AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N",
                  "V3Vector": "CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:N",
                  "V2Score": 2.1,
                  "V3Score": 6.5
                },
                "redhat": {
                  "V2Vector": "AV:L/AC:H/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C",
                  "V3Vector": "CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H",
                  "V2Score": 6.2,
                  "V3Score": 8.6
                }
              },
              "References": [
                "http://seclists.org/oss-sec/2016/q1/452",
                "http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/02/28/2",
                "http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2016/02/28/3",
                "https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-2781",
                "https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2016-2781",
                "https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rf9fa47ab66495c78bb4120b0754dd9531ca2ff0430f6685ac9b07772@%3Cdev.mina.apache.org%3E",
                "https://lore.kernel.org/patchwork/patch/793178/",
                "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2016-2781"
              ],
              "PublishedDate": "2017-02-07T15:59:00Z",
              "LastModifiedDate": "2021-02-25T17:15:00Z"
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "Misconfigurations": [
    {
      "Namespace": "default",
      "Kind": "Deployment",
      "Name": "app",
      "Results": [
        {
          "Target": "Deployment/app",
          "Class": "config",
          "Type": "kubernetes",
          "MisconfSummary": {
            "Successes": 20,
            "Failures": 19,
            "Exceptions": 0
          },
          "Misconfigurations": [
            {
              "Type": "Kubernetes Security Check",
              "ID": "KSV001",
              "Title": "Process can elevate its own privileges",
              "Description": "A program inside the container can elevate its own privileges and run as root, which might give the program control over the container and node.",
              "Message": "Container 'app' of Deployment 'app' should set 'securityContext.allowPrivilegeEscalation' to false",
              "Namespace": "builtin.kubernetes.KSV001",
              "Query": "data.builtin.kubernetes.KSV001.deny",
              "Resolution": "Set 'set containers[].securityContext.allowPrivilegeEscalation' to 'false'.",
              "Severity": "MEDIUM",
              "PrimaryURL": "https://avd.aquasec.com/misconfig/ksv001",
              "References": [
                "https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/security/pod-security-standards/#restricted",
                "https://avd.aquasec.com/misconfig/ksv001"
              ],
              "Status": "FAIL",
              "Layer": {},
              "IacMetadata": {
                "Provider": "Kubernetes",
                "Service": "general",
                "StartLine": 121,
                "EndLine": 133
              }
            },
            {
              "Type": "Kubernetes Security Check",
              "ID": "KSV003",
              "Title": "Default capabilities not dropped",
              "Description": "The container should drop all default capabilities and add only those that are needed for its execution.",
              "Message": "Container 'app' of Deployment 'app' should add 'ALL' to 'securityContext.capabilities.drop'",
              "Namespace": "builtin.kubernetes.KSV003",
              "Query": "data.builtin.kubernetes.KSV003.deny",
              "Resolution": "Add 'ALL' to containers[].securityContext.capabilities.drop.",
              "Severity": "LOW",
              "PrimaryURL": "https://avd.aquasec.com/misconfig/ksv003",
              "References": [
                "https://kubesec.io/basics/containers-securitycontext-capabilities-drop-index-all/",
                "https://avd.aquasec.com/misconfig/ksv003"
              ],
              "Status": "FAIL",
              "Layer": {},
              "IacMetadata": {
                "Provider": "Kubernetes",
                "Service": "general",
                "StartLine": 121,
                "EndLine": 133
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "Namespace": "default",
      "Kind": "ConfigMap",
      "Name": "kube-root-ca.crt"
    }
  ]
}

Infra checks

Trivy by default scans kubernetes infra components (apiserver, controller-manager, scheduler and etcd) if they exist under the kube-system namespace. For example, if you run a full cluster scan, or scan all components under kube-system with commands:

$ trivy k8s cluster --report summary # full cluster scan
$ trivy k8s all -n kube-system --report summary # scan all components under kube-system

A table will be printed about misconfigurations found on kubernetes core components:

Summary Report for minikube
┌─────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────┐
│  Namespace  │               Resource               │ Kubernetes Infra Assessment │
│             │                                      ├────┬────┬────┬─────┬────────┤
│             │                                      │ C  │ H  │ M  │ L   │   U    │
├─────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────┼────┼────┼────┼─────┼────────┤
│ kube-system │ Pod/kube-apiserver-minikube          │    │    │ 1  │ 10  │        │
│ kube-system │ Pod/kube-controller-manager-minikube │    │    │    │ 3   │        │
│ kube-system │ Pod/kube-scheduler-minikube          │    │    │    │ 1   │        │
└─────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────┴────┴────┴────┴─────┴────────┘
Severities: C=CRITICAL H=HIGH M=MEDIUM L=LOW U=UNKNOWN

The infra checks are based on CIS Benchmarks recommendations for kubernetes.

If you want filter only for the infra checks, you can use the flag --components along with the --security-checks=config

$ trivy k8s cluster --report summary --components=infra --security-checks=config # scan only infra

Or, to filter for all other checks besides the infra checks, you can:

$ trivy k8s cluster --report summary --components=workload --security-checks=config # scan all components besides infra