- Requirements
-
Configuration
- Customizing the container scanning settings
- Supported distributions
- Overriding the container scanning template
- Change scanners
- Using a custom SSL CA certificate authority
- Vulnerability allowlisting
- Running container scanning in an offline environment
- Running the standalone container scanning tool
- Reports JSON format
- Security Dashboard
- Vulnerabilities database update
- Interacting with the vulnerabilities
- Solutions for vulnerabilities (auto-remediation)
- Troubleshooting
Container Scanning
Introduced in GitLab Ultimate 10.4.
Your application’s Docker image may itself be based on Docker images that contain known vulnerabilities. By including an extra job in your pipeline that scans for those vulnerabilities and displays them in a merge request, you can use GitLab to audit your Docker-based apps.
GitLab provides integration with open-source tools for vulnerability static analysis in containers:
To integrate GitLab with security scanners other than those listed here, see Security scanner integration.
You can enable container scanning by doing one of the following:
-
Include the CI job in your existing
.gitlab-ci.yml
file. - Implicitly use Auto Container Scanning, provided by Auto DevOps.
GitLab compares the found vulnerabilities between the source and target branches, and shows the information directly in the merge request.
Requirements
To enable container scanning in your pipeline, you need the following:
-
GitLab Runner with the
docker
orkubernetes
executor. - Docker
18.09.03
or higher installed on the same computer as the runner. If you’re using the shared runners on GitLab.com, then this is already the case. - An image matching the supported distributions.
-
Build and push
the Docker image to your project’s container registry. If using a third-party container
registry, you might need to provide authentication credentials using the
DOCKER_USER
andDOCKER_PASSWORD
configuration variables. - The name of the Docker image to scan, in the
DOCKER_IMAGE
configuration variable.
Configuration
How you enable container scanning depends on your GitLab version:
- GitLab 11.9 and later: Include the
Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
template that comes with your GitLab installation. - GitLab versions earlier than 11.9: Copy and use the job from the
Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
template.
Other changes:
- GitLab 13.6 introduced better support for
FIPS by upgrading the
CS_MAJOR_VERSION
from2
to3
. Version3
of thecontainer_scanning
Docker image usescentos:centos8
as the new base. It also removes the use of the start.sh script and instead executes the analyzer by default. Any customizations made to thecontainer_scanning
job’sbefore_script
andafter_script
blocks may not work with the new version. To roll back to the previousalpine:3.11.3
-based Docker image, you can specify the major version through theCS_MAJOR_VERSION
variable. - GitLab 13.9 introduced integration with
Trivy by upgrading
CS_MAJOR_VERSION
from3
to4
. - GitLab 14.0 introduced an integration with Trivy as the default for container scanning, and also introduced an integration with Grype as an alternative scanner.
To include the Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
template (GitLab 11.9 and later), add the
following to your .gitlab-ci.yml
file:
include:
- template: Security/Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
The included template:
- Creates a
container_scanning
job in your CI/CD pipeline. - Pulls the built Docker image from your project’s container registry (see requirements) and scans it for possible vulnerabilities.
GitLab saves the results as a Container Scanning report artifact that you can download and analyze later. When downloading, you always receive the most-recent artifact.
The following is a sample .gitlab-ci.yml
that builds your Docker image, pushes it to the container
registry, and scans the image:
build:
image: docker:latest
stage: build
services:
- docker:dind
variables:
IMAGE: $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG:$CI_COMMIT_SHA
script:
- docker info
- docker login -u "$CI_REGISTRY_USER" -p "$CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD" $CI_REGISTRY
- docker build -t $IMAGE .
- docker push $IMAGE
include:
- template: Security/Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
Customizing the container scanning settings
There may be cases where you want to customize how GitLab scans your containers. For example, you
may want to enable more verbose output, access a Docker registry that requires
authentication, and more. To change such settings, use the variables
parameter in your .gitlab-ci.yml
to set CI/CD variables.
The variables you set in your .gitlab-ci.yml
overwrite those in
Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
.
This example includes the container scanning template and enables verbose output for the analyzer:
include:
- template: Security/Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
variables:
SECURE_LOG_LEVEL: 'debug'
Available CI/CD variables
You can configure analyzers by using the following CI/CD variables:
CI/CD Variable | Default | Description | Scanner |
---|---|---|---|
ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE
| ""
| Bundle of CA certs that you want to trust. See Using a custom SSL CA certificate authority for more details. | All |
CI_APPLICATION_REPOSITORY
| $CI_REGISTRY_IMAGE/$CI_COMMIT_REF_SLUG
| Docker repository URL for the image to be scanned. | All |
CI_APPLICATION_TAG
| $CI_COMMIT_SHA
| Docker repository tag for the image to be scanned. | All |
CS_ANALYZER_IMAGE
| registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning:4
| Docker image of the analyzer. | All |
CS_DOCKER_INSECURE
| "false"
| Allow access to secure Docker registries using HTTPS without validating the certificates. | All |
CS_REGISTRY_INSECURE
| "false"
| Allow access to insecure registries (HTTP only). Should only be set to true when testing the image locally.
| Trivy. The registry must listen on port 80/tcp .
|
CS_SEVERITY_THRESHOLD
| UNKNOWN
| Severity level threshold. The scanner outputs vulnerabilities with severity level higher than or equal to this threshold. Supported levels are Unknown, Low, Medium, High, and Critical. | Trivy |
DOCKER_IMAGE
| $CI_APPLICATION_REPOSITORY:$CI_APPLICATION_TAG
| The Docker image to be scanned. If set, this variable overrides the $CI_APPLICATION_REPOSITORY and $CI_APPLICATION_TAG variables.
| All |
DOCKER_PASSWORD
| $CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD
| Password for accessing a Docker registry requiring authentication. | All |
DOCKER_USER
| $CI_REGISTRY_USER
| Username for accessing a Docker registry requiring authentication. | All |
DOCKERFILE_PATH
| Dockerfile
| The path to the Dockerfile to use for generating remediations. By default, the scanner looks for a file named Dockerfile in the root directory of the project. You should configure this variable only if your Dockerfile is in a non-standard location, such as a subdirectory. See Solutions for vulnerabilities for more details.
| All |
SECURE_LOG_LEVEL
| info
| Set the minimum logging level. Messages of this logging level or higher are output. From highest to lowest severity, the logging levels are: fatal , error , warn , info , debug . Introduced in GitLab 13.1.
| All |
Supported distributions
Support depends on the scanner:
Overriding the container scanning template
If you want to override the job definition (for example, to change properties like variables
), you
must declare and override a job after the template inclusion, and then
specify any additional keys.
This example sets GIT_STRATEGY
to fetch
:
include:
- template: Security/Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
container_scanning:
variables:
GIT_STRATEGY: fetch
only
and except
.
When overriding the template, you must use rules
instead.Change scanners
The container-scanning analyzer can use different scanners, depending on the value of the
CS_ANALYZER_IMAGE
configuration variable.
The following options are available:
Scanner name | CS_ANALYZER_IMAGE
|
---|---|
Default (Trivy) | registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning:4
|
Grype | registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning/grype:4
|
Trivy | registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning/trivy:4
|
If you’re migrating from a GitLab 13.x release to a GitLab 14.x release and have customized the
container_scanning
job or its CI variables, you might need to perform these migration steps in
your CI file:
-
Remove these variables:
CS_MAJOR_VERSION
CS_PROJECT
SECURE_ANALYZERS_PREFIX
-
Review the
CS_ANALYZER_IMAGE
variable. It no longer depends on the variables above and its new default value isregistry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning:4
. If you have an offline environment, see Running container scanning in an offline environment. -
If present, remove the
.cs_common
andcontainer_scanning_new
configuration sections. -
If the
container_scanning
section is present, it’s safer to create one from scratch based on the new version of theContainer-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml
template. Once finished, it should not have any variables that are only applicable to Klar or Clair. For a complete list of supported variables, see available variables. -
Make any necessary customizations to the chosen scanner. We recommend that you minimize such customizations, as they might require changes in future GitLab major releases.
-
Trigger a new run of a pipeline that includes the
container_scanning
job. Inspect the job output and ensure that the log messages do not mention Clair.
container_scanning
is not
considered for scanners other than Clair. In GitLab 14.0 and later, all variables can be defined
either as a global variable or under container_scanning
.Using a custom SSL CA certificate authority
You can use the ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE
CI/CD variable to configure a custom SSL CA certificate authority, which is used to verify the peer when fetching Docker images from a registry which uses HTTPS. The ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE
value should contain the text representation of the X.509 PEM public-key certificate. For example, to configure this value in the .gitlab-ci.yml
file, use the following:
container_scanning:
variables:
ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE: |
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
MIIGqTCCBJGgAwIBAgIQI7AVxxVwg2kch4d56XNdDjANBgkqhkiG9w0BAQsFADCB
...
jWgmPqF3vUbZE0EyScetPJquRFRKIesyJuBFMAs=
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
The ADDITIONAL_CA_CERT_BUNDLE
value can also be configured as a custom variable in the UI, either as a file
, which requires the path to the certificate, or as a variable, which requires the text representation of the certificate.
Vulnerability allowlisting
To allowlist specific vulnerabilities, follow these steps:
- Set
GIT_STRATEGY: fetch
in your.gitlab-ci.yml
file by following the instructions in overriding the container scanning template. - Define the allowlisted vulnerabilities in a YAML file named
vulnerability-allowlist.yml
. This must use the format described invulnerability-allowlist.yml
data format. - Add the
vulnerability-allowlist.yml
file to the root folder of your project’s Git repository.
vulnerability-allowlist.yml data format
The vulnerability-allowlist.yml
file is a YAML file that specifies a list of CVE IDs of vulnerabilities that are allowed to exist, because they’re false positives, or they’re not applicable.
If a matching entry is found in the vulnerability-allowlist.yml
file, the following happens:
- The vulnerability is not included when the analyzer generates the
gl-container-scanning-report.json
file. - The Security tab of the pipeline does not show the vulnerability. It is not included in the JSON file, which is the source of truth for the Security tab.
Example vulnerability-allowlist.yml
file:
generalallowlist:
CVE-2019-8696:
CVE-2014-8166: cups
CVE-2017-18248:
images:
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/dast/webgoat-8.0@sha256:
CVE-2018-4180:
your.private.registry:5000/centos:
CVE-2015-1419: libxml2
CVE-2015-1447:
This example excludes from gl-container-scanning-report.json
:
- All vulnerabilities with CVE IDs: CVE-2019-8696, CVE-2014-8166, CVE-2017-18248.
- All vulnerabilities found in the
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/dast/webgoat-8.0@sha256
container image with CVE ID CVE-2018-4180. - All vulnerabilities found in
your.private.registry:5000/centos
container with CVE IDs CVE-2015-1419, CVE-2015-1447.
File format
-
generalallowlist
block allows you to specify CVE IDs globally. All vulnerabilities with matching CVE IDs are excluded from the scan report. -
images
block allows you to specify CVE IDs for each container image independently. All vulnerabilities from the given image with matching CVE IDs are excluded from the scan report. The image name is retrieved from one of the environment variables used to specify the Docker image to be scanned, such as$CI_APPLICATION_REPOSITORY:$CI_APPLICATION_TAG
orDOCKER_IMAGE
. The image provided in this block must match this value and must not include the tag value. For example, if you specify the image to be scanned usingDOCKER_IMAGE=alpine:3.7
, then you would usealpine
in theimages
block, but you cannot usealpine:3.7
.You can specify container image in multiple ways:
- as image name only (such as
centos
). - as full image name with registry hostname (such as
your.private.registry:5000/centos
). - as full image name with registry hostname and sha256 label (such as
registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/dast/webgoat-8.0@sha256
).
- as image name only (such as
cups
and libxml2
in the previous example) is an optional comment format. It has no impact on the handling of vulnerabilities. You can include comments to describe the vulnerability.Container scanning job log format
You can verify the results of your scan and the correctness of your vulnerability-allowlist.yml
file by looking
at the logs that are produced by the container scanning analyzer in container_scanning
job details.
The log contains a list of found vulnerabilities as a table, for example:
+------------+-------------------------+------------------------+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| STATUS | CVE SEVERITY | PACKAGE NAME | PACKAGE VERSION | CVE DESCRIPTION |
+------------+-------------------------+------------------------+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Approved | High CVE-2019-3462 | apt | 1.4.8 | Incorrect sanitation of the 302 redirect field in HTTP transport metho |
| | | | | d of apt versions 1.4.8 and earlier can lead to content injection by a |
| | | | | MITM attacker, potentially leading to remote code execution on the ta |
| | | | | rget machine. |
+------------+-------------------------+------------------------+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Unapproved | Medium CVE-2020-27350 | apt | 1.4.8 | APT had several integer overflows and underflows while parsing .deb pa |
| | | | | ckages, aka GHSL-2020-168 GHSL-2020-169, in files apt-pkg/contrib/extr |
| | | | | acttar.cc, apt-pkg/deb/debfile.cc, and apt-pkg/contrib/arfile.cc. This |
| | | | | issue affects: apt 1.2.32ubuntu0 versions prior to 1.2.32ubuntu0.2; 1 |
| | | | | .6.12ubuntu0 versions prior to 1.6.12ubuntu0.2; 2.0.2ubuntu0 versions |
| | | | | prior to 2.0.2ubuntu0.2; 2.1.10ubuntu0 versions prior to 2.1.10ubuntu0 |
| | | | | .1; |
+------------+-------------------------+------------------------+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Unapproved | Medium CVE-2020-3810 | apt | 1.4.8 | Missing input validation in the ar/tar implementations of APT before v |
| | | | | ersion 2.1.2 could result in denial of service when processing special |
| | | | | ly crafted deb files. |
+------------+-------------------------+------------------------+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------+
Vulnerabilities in the log are marked as Approved
when the corresponding CVE ID is added to the vulnerability-allowlist.yml
file.
Running container scanning in an offline environment
For self-managed GitLab instances in an environment with limited, restricted, or intermittent access to external resources through the internet, some adjustments are required for the container scanning job to successfully run. For more information, see Offline environments.
Requirements for offline container Scanning
To use container scanning in an offline environment, you need:
- GitLab Runner with the
docker
orkubernetes
executor. - To configure a local Docker container registry with copies of the container scanning images. You can find these images in their respective registries:
GitLab Analyzer | Container Registry |
---|---|
Container-Scanning | Container-Scanning container registry |
Note that GitLab Runner has a default pull policy
of always
,
meaning the runner tries to pull Docker images from the GitLab container registry even if a local
copy is available. The GitLab Runner pull_policy
can be set to if-not-present
in an offline environment if you prefer using only locally available Docker images. However, we
recommend keeping the pull policy setting to always
if not in an offline environment, as this
enables the use of updated scanners in your CI/CD pipelines.
Support for Custom Certificate Authorities
Support for custom certificate authorities was introduced in the following versions:
Scanner | Version |
---|---|
Trivy
| 4.0.0 |
Grype
| 4.3.0 |
Make GitLab container scanning analyzer images available inside your Docker registry
For container scanning, import the following images from registry.gitlab.com
into your
local Docker container registry:
registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning:4
registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning/grype:4
registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning/trivy:4
The process for importing Docker images into a local offline Docker registry depends on your network security policy. Please consult your IT staff to find an accepted and approved process by which you can import or temporarily access external resources. These scanners are periodically updated, and you may be able to make occasional updates on your own.
For more information, see the specific steps on how to update an image with a pipeline.
For details on saving and transporting Docker images as a file, see Docker’s documentation on
docker save
, docker load
,
docker export
, and docker import
.
Set container scanning CI/CD variables to use local container scanner analyzers
-
Override the container scanning template in your
.gitlab-ci.yml
file to refer to the Docker images hosted on your local Docker container registry:include: - template: Security/Container-Scanning.gitlab-ci.yml container_scanning: image: $CI_REGISTRY/namespace/gitlab-container-scanning
-
If your local Docker container registry is running securely over
HTTPS
, but you’re using a self-signed certificate, then you must setCS_DOCKER_INSECURE: "true"
in the abovecontainer_scanning
section of your.gitlab-ci.yml
.
Automating container scanning vulnerability database updates with a pipeline
We recommend that you set up a scheduled pipeline
to fetch the latest vulnerabilities database on a preset schedule.
Automating this with a pipeline means you do not have to do it manually each time. You can use the
following .gitlab-yml.ci
example as a template.
variables:
SOURCE_IMAGE: registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning:4
TARGET_IMAGE: $CI_REGISTRY/namespace/gitlab-container-scanning
image: docker:stable
update-scanner-image:
services:
- docker:dind
script:
- docker pull $SOURCE_IMAGE
- docker tag $SOURCE_IMAGE $TARGET_IMAGE
- echo "$CI_REGISTRY_PASSWORD" | docker login $CI_REGISTRY --username $CI_REGISTRY_USER --password-stdin
- docker push $TARGET_IMAGE
The above template works for a GitLab Docker registry running on a local installation. However, if
you’re using a non-GitLab Docker registry, you must change the $CI_REGISTRY
value and the
docker login
credentials to match your local registry’s details.
Running the standalone container scanning tool
It’s possible to run the GitLab container scanning tool against a Docker container without needing to run it within the context of a CI job. To scan an image directly, follow these steps:
-
Run Docker Desktop or Docker Machine.
-
Run the analyzer’s Docker image, passing the image and tag you want to analyze in the
CI_APPLICATION_REPOSITORY
andCI_APPLICATION_TAG
variables:docker run \ --interactive --rm \ --volume "$PWD":/tmp/app \ -e CI_PROJECT_DIR=/tmp/app \ -e CI_APPLICATION_REPOSITORY=registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/dast/webgoat-8.0@sha256 \ -e CI_APPLICATION_TAG=bc09fe2e0721dfaeee79364115aeedf2174cce0947b9ae5fe7c33312ee019a4e \ registry.gitlab.com/security-products/container-scanning
The results are stored in gl-container-scanning-report.json
.
Reports JSON format
The container scanning tool emits a JSON report file. For more information, see the schema for this report.
Here’s an example container scanning report:
{
"version": "3.0.0",
"vulnerabilities": [
{
"id": "df52bc8ce9a2ae56bbcb0c4ecda62123fbd6f69b",
"category": "container_scanning",
"message": "CVE-2019-3462 in apt-1.4.8",
"description": "Incorrect sanitation of the 302 redirect field in HTTP transport method of apt versions 1.4.8 and earlier can lead to content injection by a MITM attacker, potentially leading to remote code execution on the target machine.",
"severity": "High",
"confidence": "Unknown",
"solution": "Upgrade apt from 1.4.8 to 1.4.9",
"scanner": {
"id": "trivy",
"name": "trivy"
},
"location": {
"dependency": {
"package": {
"name": "apt"
},
"version": "1.4.8"
},
"operating_system": "debian:9.4",
"image": "registry.gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security-products/dast/webgoat-8.0@sha256:bc09fe2e0721dfaeee79364115aeedf2174cce0947b9ae5fe7c33312ee019a4e"
},
"identifiers": [
{
"type": "cve",
"name": "CVE-2019-3462",
"value": "CVE-2019-3462",
"url": "http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/106690"
}
],
"links": [
{
"url": "http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/106690"
},
{
"url": "https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2019-3462"
},
{
"url": "https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/8338a0f605bdbb3a6098bb76f666a95fc2b2f53f37fa1ecc89f1146f@%3Cdevnull.infra.apache.org%3E"
},
{
"url": "https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/01/msg00013.html"
},
{
"url": "https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/01/msg00014.html"
},
{
"url": "https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20190125-0002/"
},
{
"url": "https://usn.ubuntu.com/3863-1/"
},
{
"url": "https://usn.ubuntu.com/3863-2/"
},
{
"url": "https://usn.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-3863-1"
},
{
"url": "https://usn.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-3863-2"
},
{
"url": "https://www.debian.org/security/2019/dsa-4371"
}
]
}
],
"remediations": []
"scan": {
"scanner": {
"id": "trivy",
"name": "Trivy",
"url": "https://github.com/aquasecurity/trivy/",
"vendor": {
"name": "GitLab"
},
"version": "0.16.0"
},
"type": "container_scanning",
"start_time": "2021-04-14T19:45:58",
"end_time": "2021-04-14T19:46:18",
"status": "success"
}
}
Security Dashboard
The Security Dashboard shows you an overview of all the security vulnerabilities in your groups, projects and pipelines.
Vulnerabilities database update
If you use container scanning and want more information about the vulnerabilities database update, see the maintenance table.
Interacting with the vulnerabilities
After a vulnerability is found, you can address it.
Solutions for vulnerabilities (auto-remediation)
Some vulnerabilities can be fixed by applying the solution that GitLab automatically generates.
To enable remediation support, the scanning tool must have access to the Dockerfile
specified by
the DOCKERFILE_PATH
CI/CD variable. To ensure that the scanning tool
has access to this
file, it’s necessary to set GIT_STRATEGY: fetch
in
your .gitlab-ci.yml
file by following the instructions described in this document’s
overriding the container scanning template section.
Read more about the solutions for vulnerabilities.
Troubleshooting
docker: Error response from daemon: failed to copy xattrs
When the runner uses the docker
executor and NFS is used
(for example, /var/lib/docker
is on an NFS mount), container scanning might fail with
an error like the following:
docker: Error response from daemon: failed to copy xattrs: failed to set xattr "security.selinux" on /path/to/file: operation not supported.
This is a result of a bug in Docker which is now fixed.
To prevent the error, ensure the Docker version that the runner is using is
18.09.03
or higher. For more information, see
issue #10241.
Getting warning message gl-container-scanning-report.json: no matching files
For information on this, see the general Application Security troubleshooting section.