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Enable/Disable Scanners

You can enable/disable scanners with the --scanners flag.

Supported values:

  • vuln
  • config
  • secret
  • license

For example, container image scanning enables vulnerability and secret scanners by default. If you don't need secret scanning, it can be disabled.

$ trivy image --scanners vuln alpine:3.15

Skip Files

Scanner Supported
Vulnerability ✓
Misconfiguration ✓
Secret ✓
License ✓

By default, Trivy traverses directories and searches for all necessary files for scanning. You can skip files that you don't maintain using the --skip-files flag.

$ trivy image --skip-files "/Gemfile.lock" --skip-files "/var/lib/gems/2.5.0/gems/http_parser.rb-0.6.0/Gemfile.lock" quay.io/fluentd_elasticsearch/fluentd:v2.9.0

It's possible to specify globs as part of the value.

$ trivy image --skip-files "./testdata/*/bar" .

Will skip any file named bar in the subdirectories of testdata.

Skip Directories

Scanner Supported
Vulnerability ✓
Misconfiguration ✓
Secret ✓
License ✓

By default, Trivy traverses directories and searches for all necessary files for scanning. You can skip directories that you don't maintain using the --skip-dirs flag.

$ trivy image --skip-dirs /var/lib/gems/2.5.0/gems/fluent-plugin-detect-exceptions-0.0.13 --skip-dirs "/var/lib/gems/2.5.0/gems/http_parser.rb-0.6.0" quay.io/fluentd_elasticsearch/fluentd:v2.9.0

It's possible to specify globs as part of the value.

$ trivy image --skip-dirs "./testdata/*" .

Will skip all subdirectories of the testdata directory.

Tip

Glob patterns work with any trivy subcommand (image, config, etc.) and can be specified to skip both directories (with --skip-dirs) and files (with --skip-files).

Advanced globbing

Trivy also supports the globstar pattern matching. 

$ trivy image --skip-files "**/foo"``` image:tag

Will skip the file foo that happens to be nested under any parent(s).

File patterns

Scanner Supported
Vulnerability ✓
Misconfiguration ✓
Secret
License

When a directory is given as an input, Trivy will recursively look for and test all files based on file patterns. The default file patterns are here.

In addition to the default file patterns, the --file-patterns option takes regexp patterns to look for your files. For example, it may be useful when your file name of Dockerfile doesn't match the default patterns.

This can be repeated for specifying multiple file patterns.

A file pattern contains the analyzer it is used for, and the pattern itself, joined by a semicolon. For example: 

--file-patterns "dockerfile:.*.docker" --file-patterns "yaml:deployment" --file-patterns "pip:requirements-.*\.txt"

The prefixes are listed here

Exit Code

Scanner Supported
Vulnerability ✓
Misconfiguration ✓
Secret ✓
License ✓

By default, Trivy exits with code 0 even when security issues are detected. Use the --exit-code option if you want to exit with a non-zero exit code.

$ trivy image --exit-code 1 python:3.4-alpine3.9
Result 
2019-05-16T12:51:43.500+0900    INFO    Updating vulnerability database...
2019-05-16T12:52:00.387+0900    INFO    Detecting Alpine vulnerabilities...

python:3.4-alpine3.9 (alpine 3.9.2)
===================================
Total: 1 (UNKNOWN: 0, LOW: 0, MEDIUM: 1, HIGH: 0, CRITICAL: 0)

+---------+------------------+----------+-------------------+---------------+--------------------------------+
| LIBRARY | VULNERABILITY ID | SEVERITY | INSTALLED VERSION | FIXED VERSION |             TITLE              |
+---------+------------------+----------+-------------------+---------------+--------------------------------+
| openssl | CVE-2019-1543    | MEDIUM   | 1.1.1a-r1         | 1.1.1b-r1     | openssl: ChaCha20-Poly1305     |
|         |                  |          |                   |               | with long nonces               |
+---------+------------------+----------+-------------------+---------------+--------------------------------+

This option is useful for CI/CD. In the following example, the test will fail only when a critical vulnerability is found.

$ trivy image --exit-code 0 --severity MEDIUM,HIGH ruby:2.4.0
$ trivy image --exit-code 1 --severity CRITICAL ruby:2.4.0

Exit on EOL

Scanner Supported
Vulnerability ✓
Misconfiguration
Secret
License

Sometimes you may surprisingly get 0 vulnerabilities in an old image:

  • Enabling --ignore-unfixed option while all packages have no fixed versions.
  • Scanning a rather outdated OS (e.g. Ubuntu 10.04).

An OS at the end of service/life (EOL) usually gets into this situation, which is definitely full of vulnerabilities. --exit-on-eol can fail scanning on EOL OS with a non-zero code. This flag is available with the following targets.

  • Container images (trivy image)
  • Virtual machine images (trivy vm)
  • SBOM (trivy sbom)
  • Root filesystem (trivy rootfs)
$ trivy image --exit-on-eol 1 alpine:3.10
Result 
2023-03-01T11:07:15.455+0200    INFO    Vulnerability scanning is enabled
...
2023-03-01T11:07:17.938+0200    WARN    This OS version is no longer supported by the distribution: alpine 3.10.9
2023-03-01T11:07:17.938+0200    WARN    The vulnerability detection may be insufficient because security updates are not provided

alpine:3.10 (alpine 3.10.9)
===========================
Total: 1 (UNKNOWN: 0, LOW: 0, MEDIUM: 0, HIGH: 0, CRITICAL: 1)

┌───────────┬────────────────┬──────────┬───────────────────┬───────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  Library  │ Vulnerability  │ Severity │ Installed Version │ Fixed Version │                            Title                            │
├───────────┼────────────────┼──────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ apk-tools │ CVE-2021-36159 │ CRITICAL │ 2.10.6-r0         │ 2.10.7-r0     │ libfetch before 2021-07-26, as used in apk-tools, xbps, and │
│           │                │          │                   │               │ other products, mishandles...                               │
│           │                │          │                   │               │ https://avd.aquasec.com/nvd/cve-2021-36159                  │
└───────────┴────────────────┴──────────┴───────────────────┴───────────────┴─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
2023-03-01T11:07:17.941+0200    ERROR   Detected EOL OS: alpine 3.10.9

This option is useful for CI/CD. The following example will fail when a critical vulnerability is found or the OS is EOSL:

$ trivy image --exit-code 1 --exit-on-eol 1 --severity CRITICAL alpine:3.16.3