checkov VS tfsec

1. Checkov: https://github.com/bridgecrewio/checkov Checkov is a static code analysis tool that helps developers prevent cloud misconfigurations during the development phase by scanning Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, and more.

Checkov Owner/Maintainer: Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks (acquired in 2021) Age: First released on GitHub on March 31st, 2021 License: Apache License 2.0

‍Checkov is another great tool that examines your Terraform files (.tf), parsing the configurations and evaluating them against a comprehensive set of predefined policies. It scans Terraform-managed infrastructure and detects misconfigurations that could lead to security issues or non-compliance with best practices and regulations.

Bridgecrew — Infrastructure as code (IaC) security powered by the open source tool - Checkov. The core Bridgecrew platform is free for up to 50 IaC resources.

Kustomize: It provides a solution to customize the Kubernetes resource base configuration and differential configuration without template and DSL. It does not solve the constraint problem itself, but needs to cooperate with a large number of additional tools to check constraints, such as Kube-linter, Checkov and kubescape.

Checkov is a versatile static code analysis tool designed for infrastructure as code (IaC) and software composition analysis (SCA). It supports a wide range of technologies, including Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Docker, and others, to detect security and compliance issues through graph-based scanning. Checkov also performs SCA scans, identifying vulnerabilities in open source packages and images by checking for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). Additionally, it is integrated into Prisma Cloud Application Security, a platform that helps developers secure cloud resources and infrastructure-as-code files, enabling the identification, rectification, and prevention of misconfigurations throughout the development lifecycle.

For your Dockerfiles, you can also scan them. There are lots of tools that can check your Dockerfiles. They will validate if Dockerfile is compliant with Docker best practices such as not using root user, making sure a health check exists, and not exposing the SSH port. You can use Snyk and Checkov.

You could try https://www.checkov.io/

We use https://www.checkov.io/ for this, it's very simple to get started with and works really well as PR quality gate

Once there is a CI pipeline for delivering infra changes you can add static code analysis tools (checkov) and even start testing changes (terratest)

3. tfsec: https://github.com/aquasecurity/tfsec tfsec uses a suite of security checks to scan your Terraform templates, helping to identify potential security issues before infrastructure is deployed.

tfsec Owner/Maintainer: Aqua Security (acquired in 2021) Age: First released on GitHub on March 5th, 2019 License: MIT License tfsec project is no longer actively maintained in favor of the Trivy tool. But because many people still use it and it's quite famous, I added tfsec to this comparison. However, I recommend against using it for new projects.

‍Tfsec acts as a Terraform scanning tool. It is a security-focused linter for Terraform that scans code for security flaws, offering an additional layer of security assurance and helping to maintain a strong security posture.

... #************************** Terraform ************************************* ARG TERRAFORM_VERSION=1.7.3 RUN set -ex \ && curl -O https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/${TERRAFORM_VERSION}/terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip && unzip terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip -d /usr/local/bin/ RUN set -ex \ && mkdir -p $HOME/.terraform.d/plugin-cache && echo 'plugin_cache_dir = "$HOME/.terraform.d/plugin-cache"' > ~/.terraformrc #************************* Terragrunt ************************************* ARG TERRAGRUNT_VERSION=0.55.1 RUN set -ex \ && wget https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terragrunt/releases/download/v${TERRAGRUNT_VERSION}/terragrunt_linux_amd64 -q \ && mv terragrunt_linux_amd64 /usr/local/bin/terragrunt \ && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/terragrunt #*********************** Terramate **************************************** ARG TERRAMATE_VERSION=0.4.5 RUN set -ex \ && wget https://github.com/mineiros-io/terramate/releases/download/v${TERRAMATE_VERSION}/terramate_${TERRAMATE_VERSION}_linux_x86_64.tar.gz \ && tar -xzf terramate_${TERRAMATE_VERSION}_linux_x86_64.tar.gz \ && mv terramate /usr/local/bin/terramate \ && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/terramate #*********************** tfsec ******************************************** ARG TFSEC_VERSION=1.28.5 RUN set -ex \ && wget https://github.com/aquasecurity/tfsec/releases/download/v${TFSEC_VERSION}/tfsec-linux-amd64 \ && mv tfsec-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/tfsec \ && chmod +x /usr/local/bin/tfsec \ && terragrunt --version #**********************Terraform docs ************************************ ARG TERRRAFORM_DOCS_VERSION=0.17.0 RUN set -ex \ && curl -sSLo ./terraform-docs.tar.gz https://terraform-docs.io/dl/v${TERRRAFORM_DOCS_VERSION}/terraform-docs-v${TERRRAFORM_DOCS_VERSION}-$(uname)-amd64.tar.gz \ && tar -xzf terraform-docs.tar.gz \ && chmod +x terraform-docs \ && mv terraform-docs /usr/local/bin/terraform-docs #********************* ShellCheck ***************************************** ARG SHELLCHECK_VERSION="stable" RUN set -ex \ && wget -qO- "https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/releases/download/${SHELLCHECK_VERSION?}/shellcheck-${SHELLCHECK_VERSION?}.linux.x86_64.tar.xz" | tar -xJv \ && cp "shellcheck-${SHELLCHECK_VERSION}/shellcheck" /usr/bin/ \ && shellcheck --version ...

You can give tfsec a try perhaps

Great toolchain, including Infracost or tfsec.

TFSec is an open-source tool for scanning and detecting potential security vulnerabilities in Terraform code in both HCL and JSON.

We use https://github.com/aquasecurity/tfsec we found checkov.io to be quite noisy

Beyond Snyk and Checkov - I have also used https://github.com/aquasecurity/tfsec at a few organizations both for use locally and in CI (PR Review Checks)