tfsec VS cloud-custodian

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Aqua Security (acquired in 2021) Age: First released on GitHub on March 5th, 2019 License: MIT License tfsec project is no longer actively maintained in favor of the Trivy tool.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)

Once I completed the main steps of the challenge, I went back to do some security modificaions including enabled DNSSEC, deploying WAF (I ended up removing this as the costs were quite high and instead set up account level throttling for my API) and running IAM Access Analyser to flag anything I'd over permissioned. I also set up Git commit signing and added a new Git Action workflow to run Tfsec any time I updated my terraform config files

> The best optimization is simply shutting things off

This is the way.

A similar idea has been bouncing around in my mind for a while now. An ideal, turnkey system would do the following:

- Execute via Lambda (serverless).

- Support automated startup and shutdown of various AWS resources on a schedule influenced by specially formatted tags.

- Enable resources to be brought back up out of schedule when demand dictates.

- Operate as a TCP/HTTP proxy that can delay clients so that a given service can be started when it is dormant or, even better, the service isn't serverless but you want it to be. This can't work for everything, but perhaps enough things such that the need to run always on services is reduced.

Cloud Custodian [1] can purportedly do some of this, but I've been reluctant to learn yet another YAML-based DSL to use it.

So this is my "make things designed to be always-on serverless instead" project and the work AWS has done to make Java apps function on Lambda keeps me thinking about the potential to take things that 1) have a relatively long startup time and 2) are designed to be long running service loops, and find a way to force them into the serverless execution model.

[1] https://cloudcustodian.io/

Goal was to clear up anything old and set us up to rotate keys in use. Why did I do it in the end of December? It was a quarterly goal and I learned to push those across the line if I wanted a good review. Great incentive, that one. I used Cloud Custodian for this. It has a terrible bug where the code says you'll be acting on days since the key was used but actually is reading days since it was created.

What is wrong with https://github.com/cloud-custodian/cloud-custodian?

You can start reading about it here.

Use a tool like this https://cloudcustodian.io/ to manage instance on/off hours or go fargate.

Certs aside, there are some great compliance tools out there that you might want to become familiar with. Here is one that comes to mind (is open-source): https://cloudcustodian.io/

I'd use a combination of Cloudcustodian for start/stop scheduling and Apprise for notifications.

Cloud custodian is a good utility if config rules doesn’t satisfy your needs. It’s also cross platform.

AWS Security with open source – Cloud Custodian is a Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) tool. CSPM tools evaluate your cloud configuration and identify common configuration mistakes. They also monitor cloud logs to detect threats and configuration changes.