Concepts
How does Anchore Enterprise work?
Anchore takes a data-driven approach to analysis and policy enforcement. The system has the following discrete phases for each image analyzed:
- Fetch the image content and extract it, but never execute it.
- Analyze the image by running a set of Anchore analyzers over the image content to extract and classify as much metadata as possible.
- Save the resulting analysis in the database for future use and audit.
- Evaluate policies against the analysis result, including vulnerability matches on the artifacts discovered in the image.
- Update to the latest external data used for policy evaluation and vulnerability matches (feed sync), and automatically update image analysis results against any new data found upstream.
- Notify users of changes to policy evaluations and vulnerability matches.
Repeat step 5 and 6 on intervals to ensure you have the latest external data and updated image evaluations.
The primary interface is a RESTful API that provides mechanisms to request analysis, policy evaluation, and monitoring of images in registries as well as query for image contents and analysis results. Anchore Enterprise also provides a command-line interface (CLI), and its own container.
The following modes provide different ways to use Anchore within the API:
- Interactive Mode - Use the APIs to explicitly request an image analysis, or get a policy evaluation and content reports. The system only performs operations when specifically requested by a user.
- Watch Mode - Use the APIs to configure Anchore Enterprise to poll specific registries and repositories/tags to watch for new images, and then automatically pull and evaluate them. The API sends notifications when a state changes for a tag’s vulnerability or policy evaluation.
Anchore can be easily integrated into most environments and processes using these two modes of operation.
Next Steps
Now let’s get familiar with Images in Anchore.
1 - Analyzing Images
Once an image is submitted to Anchore Enterprise for analysis, Anchore Enterprise will attempt to retrieve metadata about the image from the Docker registry and, if successful, will download the image and queue the image for analysis.
Anchore Enterprise can run one or more analyzer services to scale out processing of images. The next available analyzer worker will process the image.
During analysis, every package, software library, and file are inspected, and this data is stored in the Anchore database.
Anchore Enterprise includes a number of analyzer modules that extract data from the image including:
- Image metadata
- Image layers
- Operating System Package Data (RPM, DEB, APKG)
- File Data
- Ruby Gems
- Node.JS NPMs
- Java Archives
- Python Packages
- .NET NuGet Packages
- File content
Once a tag has been added to Anchore Enterprise, the repository will be monitored for updates to that tag. See Image and Tag Watchers for more information about images and tags.
Any updated images will be downloaded and analyzed.
Next Steps
Now let’s get familiar with the Image Analysis Process.
1.1 - Base and Parent Images
A Docker or OCI image is composed of layers. These layers may be inherited from another image or created during the build of a specific image as defined
by the instructions in a Dockerfile or other build process.
The ancestry of an image shows the image’s parent image(s) and base image. As defined by the Docker documentation,
a parent of an image is the image used to start the build of the current image, typically the image identified in the FROM
directive in the Dockerfile.
If the parent image is SCRATCH
then the image is considered a base image.
Anchore Enterprise provides an API call to retrieve all parents and bases of an image. This call dynamically computes the ancestry set using images that
have already been analyzed by the system and returns a list of image digests and their respective layers. The ancestry computation is done by matching
exact layer digests between the requested image and other images in the system.
If an image X is a parent of image Y, then image X’s layers will be the first N layers of image Y where N in the number of layers in image X.
A case where an image may have multiple results in its ancestry is as follows:
A base distro image, for example debian:10
:
FROM scratch
...
An application container image from that debian image, for example a node.js image let’s call mynode:latest
:
FROM debian:10
# Install nodejs
The application image itself built from the framework container, let’s call it myapp:v1
:
FROM mynode:latest
COPY ./app /
...
In this case, the parent image of myapp:v1
is mynode:latest
and its base is debian:10
. Anchore will return each of those images with their matching layers
in the API call. See the API docs for more information on the specifics of the GET /v2/images/{digest}/ancestors
API call itself.
The returned images can be used for subsequent calls to the base image comparison APIs for vulnerabilities and policy evaluations allowing you to determine
which findings for an image are inherited from a specific parent or base image.
Comparing an Image with its Base or Parent
Anchore Enterprise provides a mechanism to compare the policy checks and security vulnerabilities of an image with those of a base image. This allows clients to
- filter out results that are inherited from a base image and focus on the results relevant to the application image
- reverse the focus and examine the base image for policy check violations and vulnerabilities which could be a deciding factor in choosing the base image for the application
To read more about the base comparison features, jump to
1.1.1 - Compare Base Image Policy Checks
This feature provides a mechanism to compare the policy checks for an image with those of a base image. You can read more about base images and how to
find them here. Base comparison uses the same policy and tag to evaluate both images to
ensure a fair comparison. The API yields a response similar to the policy checks API with an additional element within each triggered gate check to
indicate whether the result is inherited from the base image.
Usage
This functionality is currently available via the Enterprise UI and API. Watch this space as we add base comparison support in other tools
API
Refer to API Access section for the API specification. The API route for base comparison is GET /enterprise/images/{imageDigest}/check
.
This API exposes similar path and query parameters as image policy check API GET /images/{imageDigest}/check
plus an optional query parameter for
supplying the digest of the base image. If the base digest is omitted, the system falls back to evaluating image policy checks without comparing the
results to the base image.
Example request using curl to retrieve policy check for an image digest sha256:xyz and tag p/q:r and compare the results to a base image digest sha256:abc
curl -X GET -u {username:password} "http://{servername:port}/v2/images/sha256:xyz/check?tag=p/q:r&base_digest=sha256:abc"
Example output:
[
{
"sha256:xyz": {
"p/q:r": [
{
"detail": {
"result": {
"base_image_digest": "sha256:abc",
"result": {
"123": {
"result": {
"final_action": "stop",
"header": [
"Image_Id",
"Repo_Tag",
"Trigger_Id",
"Gate",
"Trigger",
"Check_Output",
"Gate_Action",
"Whitelisted",
"Policy_Id",
"Inherited_From_Base"
],
"row_count": 2,
"rows": [
[
"123",
"p/q:r",
"41cb7cdf04850e33a11f80c42bf660b3",
"dockerfile",
"instruction",
"Dockerfile directive 'HEALTHCHECK' not found, matching condition 'not_exists' check",
"warn",
false,
"48e6f7d6-1765-11e8-b5f9-8b6f228548b6",
true
],
[
"123",
"p/q:r",
"CVE-2019-5435+curl",
"vulnerabilities",
"package",
"MEDIUM Vulnerability found in os package type (APKG) - curl (CVE-2019-5435 - http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2019-5435)",
"warn",
false,
"48e6f7d6-1765-11e8-b5f9-8b6f228548b6",
false
]
]
}
},
...
},
...
},
...
},
...
}
]
}
}
]
Note that header element Inherited_From_Base
is a new column in the API response added to support base comparison. The corresponding row element in
each item of rows
uses a boolean value to indicate whether the gate result is present in the base image. In the above example
Dockerfile directive 'HEALTHCHECK' not found, matching condition 'not_exists' check
is triggered by both images and hence Inherited_From_Base
column
is marked true
MEDIUM Vulnerability found in os package type (APKG) - curl (CVE-2019-5435 - http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2019-5435)
is not
triggered by the base image and therefore the value of Inherited_From_Base
column is false
1.1.2 - Compare Base Image Security Vulnerabilities
This feature provides a mechanism to compare the security vulnerabilities detected in an image with those of a base image. You can read more about base
images and how to find them here. The API yields a response similar to vulnerabilities API with an
additional element within each result to indicate whether the result is inherited from the base image.
Usage
This functionality is currently available via the Enterprise UI and API. Watch this space as we add base comparison support in other tools
API
Refer to API Access section for the API specification. The API route for base comparison is GET /enterprise/images/{imageDigest}/vuln/{vtype}
.
This API exposes similar path and query parameters as the security vulnerabilities API GET /images/{imageDigest}/vuln/{vtype}
plus an optional query
parameter for supplying the digest of the base image. If the base digest is omitted, the system falls back to retrieving security vulnerabilities in
the image without comparing the results to the base image.
Example request using curl to retrieve security vulnerabilities for an image digest sha:xyz and compare the results to a base image digest sha256:abc
curl -X GET -u {username:password} "http://{servername:port}/v2/images/sha256:xyz/vuln/all?base_digest=sha256:abc"
Example output:
{
"base_digest": "sha256:abc",
"image_digest": "sha256:xyz",
"vulnerability_type": "all",
"vulnerabilities": [
{
"feed": "vulnerabilities",
"feed_group": "alpine:3.12",
"fix": "7.62.0-r0",
"inherited_from_base": true,
"nvd_data": [
{
"cvss_v2": {
"base_score": 6.4,
"exploitability_score": 10.0,
"impact_score": 4.9
},
"cvss_v3": {
"base_score": 9.1,
"exploitability_score": 3.9,
"impact_score": 5.2
},
"id": "CVE-2018-16842"
}
],
"package": "libcurl-7.61.1-r3",
"package_cpe": "None",
"package_cpe23": "None",
"package_name": "libcurl",
"package_path": "pkgdb",
"package_type": "APKG",
"package_version": "7.61.1-r3",
"severity": "Medium",
"url": "http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2018-16842",
"vendor_data": [],
"vuln": "CVE-2018-16842"
},
{
"feed": "vulnerabilities",
"feed_group": "alpine:3.12",
"fix": "2.4.46-r0",
"inherited_from_base": false,
"nvd_data": [
{
"cvss_v2": {
"base_score": 5.0,
"exploitability_score": 10.0,
"impact_score": 2.9
},
"cvss_v3": {
"base_score": 7.5,
"exploitability_score": 3.9,
"impact_score": 3.6
},
"id": "CVE-2020-9490"
}
],
"package": "apache2-2.4.43-r0",
"package_cpe": "None",
"package_cpe23": "None",
"package_name": "apache2",
"package_path": "pkgdb",
"package_type": "APKG",
"package_version": "2.4.43-r0",
"severity": "Medium",
"url": "http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2020-9490",
"vendor_data": [],
"vuln": "CVE-2020-9490"
}
]
}
Note that inherited_from_base
is a new element in the API response added to support base comparison. The assigned boolean value indicates whether the
exact vulnerability is present in the base image. In the above example
- CVE-2018-16842 affects libcurl-7.61.1-r3 package in both images, hence
inherited_from_base
is marked true
- CVE-2019-5482 affects apache2-2.4.43-r0 package does not affect the base image and therefore
inherited_from_base
is set to false
1.2 - Image Analysis Process
There are two types of image analysis:
- Centralized Analysis
- Distributed Analysis
Image analysis is performed as a distinct, asynchronous, and scheduled
task driven by queues that analyzer workers periodically poll.
Image analysis_status
states:
stateDiagram
[*] --> not_analyzed: analysis queued
not_analyzed --> analyzing: analyzer starts processing
analyzing --> analyzed: analysis completed successfully
analyzing --> analysis_failed: analysis fails
analyzing --> not_analyzed: re-queue by timeout or analyzer shutdown
analysis_failed --> not_analyzed: re-queued by user request
analyzed --> not_analyzed: re-queued for re-processing by user request
Centralized Analysis
The analysis process is composed of several steps and utilizes several
system components. The basic flow of that task as shown in the following example:
Centralized analysis high level summary:
sequenceDiagram
participant A as AnchoreCTL
participant R as Registry
participant E as Anchore Deployment
A->>E: Request Image Analysis
E->>R: Get Image content
R-->>E: Image Content
E->>E: Analyze Image Content (Generate SBOM and secret scans etc) and store results
E->>E: Scan sbom for vulns and evaluate compliance
The analyzers operate in a task loop for analysis tasks as shown below:
Adding more detail, the API call trace between services looks similar to the following example flow:
Distributed Analysis
In distributed analysis, the analysis of image content takes place outside the Anchore deployment and the result is imported
into the deployment. The image has the same state machine transitions, but the ‘analyzing’ processing of an imported analysis
is the processing of the import data (vuln scanning, policy checks, etc) to prepare the data for internal use, but does not download or touch any image content.
High level example with AnchoreCTL:
sequenceDiagram
participant A as AnchoreCTL
participant R as Registry/Docker Daemon
participant E as Anchore Deployment
A->>R: Get Image content
R-->>A: Image Content
A->>A: Analyze Image Content (Generate SBOM and secret scans etc)
A->>E: Import SBOM, secret search, fs metadata
E->>E: Scan sbom for vulns and evaluate compliance
Next Steps
Now let’s get familiar with Watching Images and Tags with Anchore.
1.2.1 - Malware Scanning
Overview
Anchore Enterprise now supports the use of the open-source ClamAV malware scanner to detect malicious code embedded in container images.
This scan occurs only at analysis time when the image content itself is available, and the scan results are available via the API as well as for consumption
in new policy gates to allow gating of image with malware findings.
Signature DB Updates
Each analyzer service will run a malware signature update before analyzing each image. This does add some latency to the overall analysis time but ensures the signatures
are as up-to-date as possible for each image analyzed. The update behavior can be disabled if you prefer to manage the freshness of the db via another route, such as a shared filesystem
mounted to all analyzer nodes that is updated on a schedule. See the configuration section for details on disabling the db update.
The status of the db update is present in each scan output for each image.
Scan Results
The malware
content type is a list of scan results. Each result is the run of a malware scanner, by default clamav
.
The list of files found to contain malware signature matches is in the findings
property of each scan result. An empty array value indicates no matches found.
The metadata
property provides generic metadata specific to the scanner. For the ClamAV implementation, this includes the version data about the signature db used and
if the db update was enabled during the scan. If the db update is disabled, then the db_version
property of the metadata will not have values since the only way to get
the version metadata is during a db update.
{
"content": [
{
"findings": [
{
"path": "/somebadfile",
"signature": "Unix.Trojan.MSShellcode-40"
},
{
"path": "/somedir/somepath/otherbadfile",
"signature": "Unix.Trojan.MSShellcode-40"
}
],
"metadata": {
"db_update_enabled": true,
"db_version": {
"bytecode": "331",
"daily": "25890",
"main": "59"
}
},
"scanner": "clamav"
}
],
"content_type": "malware",
"imageDigest": "sha256:0eb874fcad5414762a2ca5b2496db5291aad7d3b737700d05e45af43bad3ce4d"
}
Policy Rules
A policy gate called malware
is available with two new triggers:
scans
trigger will fire for each file and signature combination found in the image so that you can fail an evaluation of an image if malware was detected during the analysis scansscan_not_run
trigger will fire if there are no malware scans (even empty) available for the image
See policy checks for more details
1.2.2 - Content Hints
Anchore Enterprise includes the ability to read a user-supplied ‘hints’ file to allow users to add software artifacts to Anchore’s
analysis report. The hints file, if present, contains records that describe a software package’s characteristics explicitly,
and are then added to the software bill of materials (SBOM). For example, if the owner of a CI/CD container build process
knows that there are some
software packages installed explicitly in a container image, but Anchore’s regular analyzers fail to identify them, this mechanism
can be used to include that information in the image’s SBOM, exactly as if the packages were discovered normally.
Hints cannot be used to modify the findings of Anchore’s analyzer beyond adding new packages to the report. If a user specifies
a package in the hints file that is found by Anchore’s image analyzers, the hint is ignored and a warning message is logged
to notify the user of the conflict.
Configuration
See Configuring Content Hints
Once enabled, the analyzer services will look for a file with a specific name, location and format located within the container image - /anchore_hints.json
.
The format of the file is illustrated using some examples, below.
OS Package Records
OS Packages are those that will represent packages installed using OS / Distro style package managers. Currently supported package types are rpm, dpkg, apkg
for RedHat, Debian, and Alpine flavored package managers respectively. Note that, for OS Packages, the name of the package is unique per SBOM, meaning
that only one package named ‘somepackage’ can exist in an image’s SBOM, and specifying a name in the hints file that conflicts with one with the same
name discovered by the Anchore analyzers will result in the record from the hints file taking precedence (override).
- Minimum required values for a package record in anchore_hints.json
{
"name": "musl",
"version": "1.1.20-r8",
"type": "apkg"
}
- Complete record demonstrating all of the available characteristics of a software package that can be specified
{
"name": "musl",
"version": "1.1.20",
"release": "r8",
"origin": "Timo Ter\u00e4s <[email protected]>",
"license": "MIT",
"size": "61440",
"source": "musl",
"files": ["/lib/ld-musl-x86_64.so.1", "/lib/libc.musl-x86_64.so.1", "/lib"],
"type": "apkg"
}
Non-OS/Language Package Records
Non-OS / language package records are similar in form to the OS package records, but with some extra/different characteristics being supplied, namely
the location
field. Since multiple non-os packages can be installed that have the same name, the location field is particularly important as it
is used to distinguish between package records that might otherwise be identical. Valid types for non-os packages are currently java, python, gem, npm, nuget, go, binary
.
For the latest types that are available, see the anchorectl image content <someimage>
output, which lists available types for any given deployment of Anchore Enterprise.
- Minimum required values for a package record in anchore_hints.json
{
"name": "wicked",
"version": "0.6.1",
"type": "gem"
}
- Complete record demonstrating all of the available characteristics of a software package that can be specified
{
"name": "wicked",
"version": "0.6.1",
"location": "/app/gems/specifications/wicked-0.9.0.gemspec",
"origin": "schneems",
"license": "MIT",
"source": "http://github.com/schneems/wicked",
"files": ["README.md"],
"type": "gem"
}
Putting it all together
Using the above examples, a complete anchore_hints.json file, when discovered by Anchore Enterprise located in /anchore_hints.json
inside any container image, is provided here:
{
"packages": [
{
"name": "musl",
"version": "1.1.20-r8",
"type": "apkg"
},
{
"name": "wicked",
"version": "0.6.1",
"type": "gem"
}
]
}
With such a hints file in an image based for example on alpine:latest
, the resulting image content would report these two package/version records
as part of the SBOM for the analyzed image, when viewed using anchorectl image content <image> -t os
and anchorectl image content <image> -t gem
to view the musl
and wicked
package records, respectively.
Note about using the hints file feature
The hints file feature is disabled by default, and is meant to be used in very specific circumstances where a trusted entity is entrusted with creating
and installing, or removing an anchore_hints.json file from all containers being built. It is not meant to be enabled when the container image builds
are not explicitly controlled, as the entity that is building container images could override any SBOM entry that Anchore would normally discover, which
affects the vulnerability/policy status of an image. For this reason, the feature is disabled by default and must be explicitly enabled in configuration
only if appropriate for your use case .
1.3 - Image and Tag Watchers
Overview
Anchore has the capability to monitor external Docker Registries for updates to tags as well as new tags. It also watches for updates to vulnerability databases and package metadata (the “Feeds”).
The process for monitoring updates to repositories, the addition of new tag names, is done on a duty cycle and performed by the Catalog component(s). The scheduling and tasks are driven by queues provided by the SimpleQueue service.
- Periodically, controlled by the cycle_timers configuration in the config.yaml of the catalog, a process is triggered to list all the Repository Subscription records in the system and for each record, add a task to a specific queue.
- Periodically, also controlled by the cycle_timers config, a process is triggered to pick up tasks off that queue and process repository scan tasks. Each task looks approximately like the following:
The output of this process is new tag_update subscription records, which are subsequently processed by the Tag Update handlers as described below. You can view the tag_update subscriptions using AnchoreCTL:
anchorectl subscription list -t tag_update
Tag Updates: New Images
To detect updates to tags, mapping of a new image digest to a tag name, Anchore periodically checks the registry and downloads the tag’s image manifest to compare the computed digests. This is done on a duty cycle for every tag_update subscription record. Therefore, the more subscribed tags exist in the system, the higher the load on the system to check for updates and detect changes. This processing, like repository update monitoring, is performed by the Catalog component(s).
The process, the duty-cycle of which is configured in the cycle_timers section of the catalog config.yaml is described below:
As new updates are discovered, they are automatically submitted to the analyzers, via the image analysis internal queue, for processing.
The overall process and interaction of these duty cycles works like:
Next Steps
Now let’s get familiar with Policy in Anchore.
1.4 - Analysis Archive
Anchore Enterprise is a data intensive system. Storage consumption grows with the number of images analyzed, which leaves the
following options for storage management:
- Over-provisioning storage significantly
- Increasing capacity over time, resulting in downtime (e.g. stop system, grow the db volume, restart)
- Manually deleting image analysis to free space as needed
In most cases, option 1 only works for a while, which then requires using 2 or 3. Managing storage provisioned for a
postgres DB is somewhat complex and may require significant data copies to new volumes to grow capacity over time.
To help mitigate the storage growth of the db itself, Anchore Enterprise already provides an object storage subsystem that
enables using external object stores like S3 or Swift to offload the unstructured data storage needs to systems that are
more growth tolerant and flexible. This lowers the db overhead but does not fundamentally address the issue of unbounded
growth in a busy system.
The Analysis Archive extends the object store even further by providing a system-managed way to move an image analysis
and all of its related data (policy evaluations, tags, annotations, etc) and moving it to a location outside of the main
set of images such that it consumes much less storage in the database when using an object store, perserves the last
state of the image, and supports moving it back into the main image set if it is needed in the future without requiring
that the image itself be reanalzyed–restoring from the archive does not require the actual docker image to exist at all.
To facilitate this, the system can be thought of as two sets of analysis with different capabilities and properties:
Working Set Images
The working set is the set of images in the ‘analyzed’ state in the system. These images are stored in the database,
optionally with some data in an external object store. Specifically:
- State = ‘analyzed’
- The set of images available from the /images api routes
- Available for policy evaluation, content queries, and vulnerability updates
Archive Set Images
The archive set of images are image analyses that reside almost entirely in the object store, which can be configured to
be a different location than the object store used for the working set, with minimal metadata in the anchore DB necessary
to track and restore the analysis back into the working set in the future. An archived image analysis preserves all the
annotations, tags, and metadata of the original analysis as well as all existing policy evaluation histories, but
are not updated with new vulnerabilities during feed syncs and are not available for new policy evaluations or content
queries without first being restored into the working set.
- Not listed in /images API routes
- Cannot have policy evaluations executed
- No vulnerability updates automatically (must be restored to working set first)
- Available from the /archives/images API routes
- Point-in-time snapshot of the analysis, policy evaluation, and vulnerability state of an image
- Independently configurable storage location (analysis_archive property in the services.catalog property of config.yaml)
- Small db storage consumption (if using external object store, only a few small records, bytes)
- Able to use different type of storage for cost effectiveness
- Can be restored to the working set at any time to restore full query and policy capabilities
- The archive object store is not used for any API operations other than the restore process
An image analysis, identified by the digest of the image, may exist in both sets at the same time, they are not mutually
exclusive, however the archive is not automatically updated and must be deleted an re-archived to capture updated state
from the working set image if desired.
Benefits of the Archive
Because archived image analyses are stored in a distinct object store and tracked with their own metadata in the db, the
images in that set will not impact the performance of working set image operations such as API operations, feed syncs, or
notification handling. This helps keep the system responsive and performant in cases where the set of images that you’re
interested in is much smaller than the set of images in the system, but you don’t want to delete the analysis because it
has value for audit or historical reasons.
- Leverage cheaper and more scalable cloud-based storage solutions (e.g. S3 IA class)
- Keep the working set small to manage capacity and api performance
- Ensure the working set is images you actively need to monitor without losing old data by sending it to the archive
Automatic Archiving
To help facilitate data management automatically, Anchore supports rules to define which data to archive and when
based on a few qualities of the image analysis itself. These rules are evaluated periodically by the system.
Anchore supports both account-scoped rules, editable by users in the account, and global system rules, editable only by
the system admin account users. All users can view system global rules such that they can understand what will affect
their images but they cannot update or delete the rules.
The process of automatic rule evaluation:
The catalog component periodically (daily by default, but configurable) will run through each rule in the system and
identify image digests should be archived according to either account-local rules or system global rules.
Each matching image analysis is added to the archive.
Each successfully added analysis is deleted from the working set.
For each digest migrated, a system event log entry is created, indicating that the image digest was moved to the
archive.
Archive Rules
The rules that match images are provide 3 selectors:
- Analysis timestamp - the age of the analysis itself, as expressed in days
- Source metadata (registry, repo, tag) - the values of the registry, repo, and tag values
- Tag history depth – the number of images mapped to a tag ordered by detected_at timestamp (the time at which the
system observed the mapping of a tag to a specific image manifest digest)
Rule scope:
- global - these rules will be evaluated against all images and all tags in the system, regardless of the owning account.
(system_global = true)
- account - these rules are only evaluated against the images and tags of the account which owns the rule. (system_global = false)
Example Rule:
{
"analysis_age_days": 10,
"created_at": "2019-03-30T22:23:50Z",
"last_updated": "2019-03-30T22:23:50Z",
"rule_id": "67b5f8bfde31497a9a67424cf80edf24",
"selector": {
"registry": "*",
"repository": "*",
"tag": "*"
},
"system_global": true,
"tag_versions_newer": 10,
"transition": "archive",
"exclude": {
"expiration_days": -1,
"selector": {
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "alpine",
"tag": "latest"
}
},
"max_images_per_account": 1000
}
- selector: a json object defining a set of filters on registry, repository, and tag that this rule will apply to.
- Each entry supports wildcards. e.g.
{"registry": "*", "repository": "library/*", "tag": "latest"}
- tag_versions_newer: the minimum number of tag->digest mappings with newer timestamps that must be preset for this rule to
match an image tag.
- analysis_age_days: the minimum age of the analysis to match, as indicated by the ‘analyzed_at’ timestamp on the image record.
- transition: the operation to perform, one of the following
- archive: works on the working set and transitions to archive, while deleting the source analysis upon successful
archive creation. Specifically: the analysis will “move” to the archive and no longer be in the working set.
- delete: works on the archive set and deletes the archived record on a match
- exclude: a json object defining a set of filters on registry, repository, and tag, that will exclude a subset of image(s)
from the selector defined above.
- expiration_days: This allows the exclusion filter to expire. When set to -1, the exclusion filter does not expire
- max_images_per_account: This setting may only be applied on a single “system_global” rule, and controls the maximum number of images
allows in the anchore deployment (that are not archived). If this number is exceeded, anchore will transition (according to the transition field value)
the oldest images exceeding this maximum count.
Rule conflicts and application:
For an image to be transitioned by a rule it must:
- Match at least 1 rule for each of its tag entries (either in working set if transition is archive or those in the
archive set, if a delete transition)
- All rule matches must be of the same scope, global and account rules cannot interact
Put another way, if any tag record for an image analysis is not defined to be transitioned, then the analysis record is
not transitioned.
Usage
Image analysis can be archived explicitly via the API (and CLI) as well as restored. Alternatively, the API and CLI can
manage the rules that control automatic transitions. For more information see the following:
Archiving an Image Analysis
See: Archiving an Image
Restoring an Image Analysis
See: Restoring an Image
Managing Archive Rules
See: Working with Archive Rules
2 - Policy
Once an image has been analyzed and its content has been discovered, categorized, and processed, the results can be evaluated against a user-defined set of checks to give a final pass/fail recommendation for an image. Anchore Enterprise policies are how users describe which checks to perform on what images and how the results should be interpreted.
A policy is made up from a set of rules that are used to perform an evaluation a container image. The rules can define checks against an image for things such as:
- security vulnerabilities
- package allowlists and denylists
- configuration file contents
- presence of credentials in image
- image manifest changes
- exposed ports
These checks are defined as Gates that contain Triggers that perform specific checks and emit match results and these define the things that the system can automatically evaluate and return a decision about.
For a full listing of gate, triggers, and their parameters see: Anchore Policy Checks
These policies can be applied globally or customized for specific images or categories of applications.
A policy evaluation can return one of two results:
PASSED indicating that image complies with your policy
FAILED indicating that the image is out of compliance with your policy.
Next Steps
Read more on Policies
2.1 - Policies and Evaluation
Introduction
Policies are the unit of policy definition and evaluation in Anchore Enterprise. A user may have multiple policies, but for a policy evaluation, the user must specify a policy to be evaluated or default to the policy currently marked ‘active’. See Working with Policies for more detail on manipulating and configuring policies using the system CLI.
Components of a Policy
A policy is a single JSON document, composed of several parts:
- Policies - The named sets of rules and actions.
- Allowlists - Named sets of rule exclusions to override a match in a policy rule.
- Mappings - Ordered rules that determine which policies and allowlists should be applied to a specific image at evaluation time.
- Allowlisted Images - Overrides for specific images to statically set the final result to a pass regardless of the policy evaluation result.
- Blocklisted Images - Overrides for specific images to statically set the final result to a fail regardless of the policy evaluation result.
Example JSON for an empty policy, showing the sections and top-level elements:
{
"id": "default0",
"version": "2",
"name": "My Default policy",
"comment": "My system's default policy",
"allowlisted_images": [],
"denylisted_images": [],
"mappings": [],
"allowlists": [],
"rule_sets": []
}
Policies
A policy contains zero or more rule sets. The rule sets in a policy define the checks to make against an image and the actions to recommend if the checks find a match.
Example of a single rule set JSON object, one entry in the rule_set
array of the larger policy document:
{
"name": "DefaultPolicy",
"version": "2",
"comment": "Policy for basic checks",
"id": "ba6daa06-da3b-46d3-9e22-f01f07b0489a",
"rules": [
{
"action": "STOP",
"gate": "vulnerabilities",
"id": "80569900-d6b3-4391-b2a0-bf34cf6d813d",
"params": [
{ "name": "package_type", "value": "all" },
{ "name": "severity_comparison", "value": ">=" },
{ "name": "severity", "value": "medium" }
],
"trigger": "package"
}
]
}
The above example defines a stop action to be produced for all package vulnerabilities found in an image that are severity medium or higher.
For information on how Rule Sets work and are evaluated, see: Rule Sets
Allowlists
An allowlist is a set of exclusion rules for trigger matches found during policy evaluation. An allowlist defines a specific gate and trigger_id (part of the output of a policy rule evaluation) that should have it’s action recommendation statically set to go. When a policy rule result is allowlisted, it is still present in the output of the policy evaluation, but it’s action is set to go and it is indicated that there was an allowlist match.
Allowlists are useful for things like:
- Ignoring CVE matches that are known to be false-positives
- Ignoring CVE matches on specific packages (perhaps if they are known to be custom patched)
Example of a simple allowlist as a JSON object from a policy:
{
"id": "allowlist1",
"name": "Simple Allowlist",
"version": "2",
"items": [
{ "id": "item1", "gate": "vulnerabilities", "trigger": "package", "trigger_id": "CVE-10000+libssl" },
{ "id": "item2", "gate": "vulnerabilities", "trigger": "package", "trigger_id": "CVE-10001+*" }
]
}
For more information, see: Allowlists
Mappings
Mappings are named rules that define which rule sets and allowlists to evaluate for a given image. The list of mappings is evaluated in order, so the ordering of the list matters because the first rule that matches an input image will be used and all others ignored.
Example of a simple mapping rule set:
[
{
"name": "DockerHub",
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "library/postgres",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "latest" },
"rule_set_ids": [ "policy1", "policy2" ],
"allowlist_ids": [ "allowlist1", "allowlist2" ]
},
{
"name": "default",
"registry": "*",
"repository": "*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*" },
"rule_set_ids": [ "policy1" ],
"allowlist_ids": [ "allowlist1" ]
}
]
For more information about mappings see: Mappings
Allowlisted Images
Allowlisted images are images, defined by registry, repository, and tag/digest/imageId, that will always result in a pass status for policy evaluation unless the image is also matched in the denylisted images section.
Example image allowlist section:
{
"name": "AllowlistDebianStable",
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "library/debian",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "stable" }
}
Denylisted Images
Denylisted images are images, defined by registry, repository, and tag/digest/imageId, that will always result in a policy policy evaluation status of fail. It is important to note that denylisting an image does not short-circuit the mapping evaluation or policy evaluations, so the full set of trigger matches will still be visible in the policy evaluation result.
Denylisted image matches override any allowlisted image matches (e.g. a tag matches a rule in both lists will always be blocklisted/fail).
Example image denylist section:
{
"name": "BlAocklistDebianUnstable",
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "library/debian",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "unstable" }
}
A complete policy example with all sections containing data:
{
"id": "default0",
"version": "2",
"name": "My Default policy",
"comment": "My system's default policy",
"allowlisted_images": [
{
"name": "AllowlistDebianStable",
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "library/debian",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "stable" }
}
],
"denylisted_images": [
{
"name": "DenylistDebianUnstable",
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "library/debian",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "unstable" }
}
],
"mappings": [
{
"name": "DockerHub",
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "library/postgres",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "latest" },
"rule_set_ids": [ "policy1", "policy2" ],
"allowlist_ids": [ "allowlist1", "allowlist2" ]
},
{
"name": "default",
"registry": "*",
"repository": "*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*" },
"rule_set_ids": [ "policy1" ],
"allowlist_ids": [ "allowlist1" ]
}
],
"allowlists": [
{
"id": "allowlist1",
"name": "Simple Allowlist",
"version": "2",
"items": [
{ "id": "item1", "gate": "vulnerabilities", "trigger": "package", "trigger_id": "CVE-10000+libssl" },
{ "id": "item2", "gate": "vulnerabilities", "trigger": "package", "trigger_id": "CVE-10001+*" }
]
},
{
"id": "allowlist2",
"name": "Simple Allowlist",
"version": "2",
"items": [
{ "id": "item1", "gate": "vulnerabilities", "trigger": "package", "trigger_id": "CVE-1111+*" }
]
}
],
"rule_sets": [
{
"name": "DefaultPolicy",
"version": "2",
"comment": "Policy for basic checks",
"id": "policy1",
"rules": [
{
"action": "STOP",
"gate": "vulnerabilities",
"trigger": "package",
"id": "rule1",
"params": [
{ "name": "package_type", "value": "all" },
{ "name": "severity_comparison", "value": ">=" },
{ "name": "severity", "value": "medium" }
]
}
]
},
{
"name": "DBPolicy",
"version": "1_0",
"comment": "Policy for basic checks on a db",
"id": "policy2",
"rules": [
{
"action": "STOP",
"gate": "vulnerabilities",
"trigger": "package",
"id": "rule1",
"params": [
{ "name": "package_type", "value": "all" },
{ "name": "severity_comparison", "value": ">=" },
{ "name": "severity", "value": "low" }
]
}
]
}
]
}
Policy Evaluation
A policy evaluation results in a status of: pass or fail and that result based on the evaluation:
- The mapping section to determine which policies and allowlists to select for evaluation against the given image and tag
- The output of the policies’ triggers and applied allowlists.
- Denylisted images section
- Allowlisted images section
A pass status means the image evaluated against the policy and only go or warn actions resulted from the policy evaluation and allowlisted evaluations, or the image was allowlisted. A fail status means the image evaluated against the policy and at least one stop action resulted from the policy evaluation and allowlist evaluation, or the image was denylisted.
The flow chart for policy evaluation:
Next Steps
Read more about the Policies component of a policy.
2.2 - Rule Sets
Overview
A rule set is a named set of rules, represented as a JSON object within a Policy. A rule set is made up of rules that define a specific check to perform and a resulting action.
A Rule Set is made up of:
- ID: a unique id for the rule set within the policy
- Name: a human readable name to give the policy (may contain spaces etc)
- A list of rules to define what to evaluate and the action to recommend on any matches for the rule
A simple example of a rule_set JSON object (found within a larger policy object):
{
"name": "DefaultPolicy",
"version": "2",
"comment": "Policy for basic checks",
"id": "policy1",
"rules": [
{
"action": "STOP",
"gate": "vulnerabilities",
"id": "rule1",
"params": [
{ "name": "package_type", "value": "all" },
{ "name": "severity_comparison", "value": ">=" },
{ "name": "severity", "value": "medium" }
],
"trigger": "package",
"recommendation": "Upgrade the package",
}
]
}
The above example defines a stop action to be produced for all package vulnerabilities found in an image that are severity medium or higher.
Policy evaluation is the execution of all defined triggers in the rule set against the image analysis result and feed data and results in a set of output trigger matches, each of which contains the defined action from the rule definition. The final recommendation value for the policy evaluation is called the final action, and is computed from the set of output matches: stop, go, or warn.
Policy Rules
Rules define the behavior of the policy at evaluation time. Each rule defines:
- Gate - Example: dockerfile
- Trigger - Example: exposed_ports
- Parameters - Parameters specific to the gate/trigger to customize its match behavior
- Action - The action to emit if a trigger evaluation finds a match. One of stop, go, warn. The only semantics of these values are in the aggregation behavior for the policy result.
Gates
A “Gate” is a logical grouping of trigger definitions and provides a broader context for the execution of triggers against image analysis data. You can think of gates as the “things to be checked”, while the triggers provide the “which check to run” context. Gates do not have parameters themselves, but namespace the set of triggers to ensure there are no name conflicts.
Examples of gates:
- vulnerabilities
- packages
- npms
- files
- …
For a complete listing see: Anchore Policy Checks
Triggers
Triggers define a specific condition to check within the context of a gate, optionally with one or more input parameters. A trigger is logically a piece of code that executes with the image analysis content and feed data as inputs and performs a specific check. A trigger emits matches for each instance of the condition for which it checks in the image. Thus, a single gate/trigger policy rule may result in many matches in final policy result, often with different match specifics (e.g. package names, cves, or filenames…).
Trigger parameters are passed as name, value pairs in the rule JSON:
{
"action": "WARN",
"parameters": [
{ "name": "param1", "value": "value1" },
{ "name": "param2", "value": "value2" },
{ "name": "paramN", "value": "valueN" }
],
"gate": "vulnerabilities",
"trigger": "packages",
}
For a complete listing of gates, triggers, and the parameters, see: Anchore Policy Checks
Policy Evaluation
- All rules in a selected rule_set are evaluated, no short-circuits
- Rules who’s triggers and parameters find a match in the image analysis data, will “fire” resulting in a record of the match and parameters. A trigger may fire many times during an evaluation (e.g. many cves found).
- Each firing of a trigger generates a trigger_id for that match
- Rules may be executed in any order, and are executed in isolation (e.g. conflicting rules are allowed, it’s up to the user to ensure that policies make sense)
A policy evaluation will always contain information about the policy and image that was evaluated as well as the Final Action. The evaluation can optionally include additional detail about the specific findings from each rule in the evaluated rule_set as well as suggested remediation steps.
Policy Evaluation Findings
When extra detail is requested as part of the policy evaluation, the following data is provided for each finding produced by the rules in the evaluated rule_set.
- trigger_id - An ID for the specific rule match that can be used to allowlist a finding
- Gate - The name of the gate that generated this finding
- Trigger - The name of the trigger within the Gate that generated this finding
- message - A human readable description of the finding
- action - One of go, warn, stop based on the action defined in the rule that generated this finding
- policy_id - The ID for the rule_set that this rule is a part of
- recommendation - An optional recommendation provided as part of the rule that generated this finding
- rule_id - The ID of the rule that generated this finding
- allowlisted - Indicates if this match was present in the applied allowlist
- allowlist_match - Only provided if allowlisted is true, contains a JSON object with details about a allowlist match (allowlist id, name and allowlist rule id)
- inherited_from_base - An optional field that indicates if this policy finding was present in a provided comparison image
Excerpt from a policy evaluation, showing just the policy evaluation output:
...json
"findings": [
{
"trigger_id": "CVE-2008-3134+imagemagick-6.q16",
"gate": "package",
"trigger": "vulnerabilities",
"message": "MEDIUM Vulnerability found in os package type (dpkg) - imagemagick-6.q16 (CVE-2008-3134 - https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-3134)",
"action": "go",
"policy_id": "48e6f7d6-1765-11e8-b5f9-8b6f228548b6",
"recommendation": "Upgrade the package",
"rule_id": "rule1",
"allowlisted": false,
"allowlist_match": null,
"inherited_from_base": false
},
{
"trigger_id": "CVE-2008-3134+libmagickwand-6.q16-2",
"gate": "package",
"trigger": "vulnerabilities",
"message": "MEDIUM Vulnerability found in os package type (dpkg) - libmagickwand-6.q16-2 (CVE-2008-3134 - https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2008-3134)",
"action": "go",
"policy_id": "48e6f7d6-1765-11e8-b5f9-8b6f228548b6",
"recommendation": "Upgrade the package",
"rule_id": "rule1",
"allowlisted": false,
"allowlist_match": null,
"inherited_from_base": false
}
]
Final Action
The final action of a policy evaluation is the policy’s recommendation based on the aggregation of all trigger evaluations defined in the policy and the resulting matches emitted.
The final action of a policy evaluation will be:
- stop - If there are any triggers that match with this action, the policy evaluation will result in an overall stop.
- warn - If there are any triggers that match with this action, and no triggers that match with stop, then the policy evaluation will result in warn.
- go - If there are no triggers that match with either stop or warn, then the policy evaluation is result is a go. go actions have no impact on the evaluation result, but are useful for recording the results of specific checks on an image in the audit trail of policy evaluations over time
The policy findings are one part of the broader policy evaluation which includes things like image allowlists and denylists and makes a final policy evaluation status determination based on the combination of several component executions. See policies for more information on that process.
Next Steps
Read more about the Mappings component of a policy.
2.3 - Policy Mappings
Mappings in the policy are a set of rules, evaluated in order, that describe matches on an image, id, digest, or tag and the corresponding sets of policies and allowlists to apply to any image that matches the rule’s criteria.
Policies can contain one or more mapping rules that are used to determine which rule_sets and allowlists apply to a given image. They match images on the registry and repository, and finally be one of id, digest, or tag.
A mapping has:
- Registry - The registry url to match, including wildcards (e.g. ‘docker.io’, ‘quay.io’, ‘gcr.io’, ‘*’)
- Repository - The repository name to match, including wildcards (e.g. ’library/nginx’, ‘mydockerhubusername/myrepositoryname’, ’library/*’, ‘*’)
- Image - The way to select an image that matches the registry and repository filters
- type: how to reference the image and the expected format of the ‘value’ property
- “tag” - just the tag name itself (the part after the ‘:’ in a docker pull string: e.g. nginx:latest -> ’latest’ is the tag name)
- “id” - the image id
- “digest” - the image digest (e.g. sha256@abc123)
- value: the value to match against, including wildcards
Note: Unlike other parts of the policy, Mappings are evaluated in order and will halt on the first matching rule. This is important to understand when combined with wildcard matches since it enables sophisticated matching behavior.
Examples
Example 1, all images match a single catch-all rule:
[
{
"registry": "*",
"repository": "*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*"},
"rule_set_ids": ["defaultpolicy"],
"allowlist_ids": ["defaultallowlist"]
}
]
Example 2, all “official” images from DockerHub are evaluated against officialspolicy and officialsallowlist (made up names for this example), while all others from DockerHub will be evaluated against defaultpolicy and defaultallowlist , and private GCR images will be evaluated against gcrpolicy and gcrallowlist:
[
{
"registry": "docker.io",
"repository": "library/*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*"},
"rule_set_ids": [ "officialspolicy"],
"allowlist_ids": [ "officialsallowlist"]
},
{
"registry": "gcr.io",
"repository": "*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*"},
"rule_set_ids": [ "gcrpolicy"],
"allowlist_ids": [ "gcrallowlist"]
},
{
"registry": "*",
"repository": "*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*"},
"rule_set_ids": [ "defaultpolicy"],
"allowlist_ids": [ "defaultallowlist"]
}
]
Example 3, all images from a unknown registry will be evaluated against defaultpolicy and defaultallowlist, and an internal registry’s images will be evaluated against a different set (internalpolicy and internalallowlist):
[
{
"registry": "myregistry.mydomain.com:5000",
"repository": "*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*"},
"policy_ids": [ "internalpolicy"],
"allowlist_ids": [ "internalallowlist"]
},
{
"registry": "*",
"repository": "*",
"image": { "type": "tag", "value": "*"},
"policy_ids": [ "defaultpolicy"],
"allowlist_ids": [ "defaultallowlist"]
}
]
Using Multiple Policies and Allowlists
The result of the evaluation of the mapping section of a policy is the list of rule sets and allowlists that will be used for actually evaluating the image. Because multiple rule sets and allowlists can be specified in each mapping rule, you can use granular rule sets and allowlists and then combined them in the mapping rules.
Examples of schemes to use for how to split-up policies include:
- Different policies for different types of checks such that each policy only uses one or two gates (e.g. vulnerabilities, packages, dockerfile)
- Different policies for web servers, another for database servers, another for logging infrastructure, etc.
- Different policies for different parts of the stack: os-packages vs. application packages
Next Steps
Read more about the allowlists component of a policy.
2.4 - Allowlists
Allowlists provide a mechanism within a policy to explicitly override a policy-rule match. An allowlist is a named set of exclusion rules that match trigger outputs.
Example allowlist:
{
"id": "allowlist1",
"name": "My First Allowlist",
"comment": "A allowlist for my first try",
"version": "2",
"items": [
{
"gate": "vulnerabilities",
"trigger_id": "CVE-2018-0737+*",
"id": "rule1",
"expires_on": "2019-12-30T12:00:00Z"
}
]
}
The components:
- Gate: The gate to allowlist matches from (ensures trigger_ids are not matched in the wrong context)
- Trigger Id: The specific trigger result to match and allowlist. This id is gate/trigger specific as each trigger may have its own trigger_id format. We’ll use the most common for this example: the CVE trigger ids produced by the vulnerability->package gate-trigger. The trigger_id specified may include wildcards for partial matches.
- id: an identifier for the rule, must only be unique within the allowlist object itself
- Expires On: (optional) specifies when a particular allowlist item expires. This is an RFC3339 date-time string. If the rule matches, but is expired, the policy engine will NOT allowlist according to that match.
The allowlist is processed if it is specified in the mapping rule that was matched during policy evaluation and is applied to the results of the policy evaluation defined in that same mapping rule. If a allowlist item matches a specific policy trigger output, then the action for that output is set to go and the policy evaluation result notes that the trigger output was matched for a allowlist item by associating it with the allowlist id and item id of the match.
An example of a allowlisted match from a snippet of a policy evaluation result (See Policies for more information on the format of the policy evaluation result). This a single row entry from the result:
[
{
"trigger_id": "CVE-2018-0737+openssl",
"gate": "package",
"trigger": "vulnerabilities",
"message": "MEDIUM Vulnerability found in os package type (dpkg) - openssl (fixed in: 1.0.1t-1+deb8u9) - (CVE-2018-0737 - https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2018-0737)",
"action": "go",
"policy_id": "myfirstpolicy",
"recommendation": "Upgrade the package",
"rule_id": "rule1",
"allowlisted": true,
"allowlist_match": {
"matched_rule_id": "rule1",
"allowlist_id": "allowlist1",
"allowlist_name": "My First Allowlist"
},
"inherited_from_base": false
},
]
Note: Allowlist are evaluated only as far as necessary. Once a policy rule match has been allowlisted by one allowlist item, it will not be checked again for allowlist matches. But, allowlist items may be evaluated out-of-order for performance optimization, so if multiple allowlist items match the same finding any one of them may be the item that is actually matched against a given trigger_id.
Next Steps
Read more about the Anchore Policy Checks for a complete list of gates and triggers.
2.5 - Anchore Policy Checks
Introduction
In this document, we describe the current anchore gates (and related triggers/parameters) that are supported within anchore policy.
Gate: dockerfile
Checks against the content of a dockerfile if provided, or a guessed dockerfile based on docker layer history if the dockerfile is not provided.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
instruction | Triggers if any directives in the list are found to match the described condition in the dockerfile. | instruction | The Dockerfile instruction to check. | from |
instruction | Triggers if any directives in the list are found to match the described condition in the dockerfile. | check | The type of check to perform. | = |
instruction | Triggers if any directives in the list are found to match the described condition in the dockerfile. | value | The value to check the dockerfile instruction against. | scratch |
instruction | Triggers if any directives in the list are found to match the described condition in the dockerfile. | actual_dockerfile_only | Only evaluate against a user-provided dockerfile, skip evaluation on inferred/guessed dockerfiles. Default is False. | true |
effective_user | Checks if the effective user matches the provided user names, either as a allowlist or blocklist depending on the type parameter setting. | users | User names to check against as the effective user (last user entry) in the images history. | root,docker |
effective_user | Checks if the effective user matches the provided user names, either as a allowlist or blocklist depending on the type parameter setting. | type | How to treat the provided user names. | denylist |
exposed_ports | Evaluates the set of ports exposed. Allows configuring allowlist or blocklist behavior. If type=allowlist, then any ports found exposed that are not in the list will cause the trigger to fire. If type=denylist, then any ports exposed that are in the list will cause the trigger to fire. | ports | List of port numbers. | 80,8080,8088 |
exposed_ports | Evaluates the set of ports exposed. Allows configuring allowlist or blocklist behavior. If type=allowlist, then any ports found exposed that are not in the list will cause the trigger to fire. If type=denylist, then any ports exposed that are in the list will cause the trigger to fire. | type | Whether to use port list as a allowlist or denylist. | denylist |
exposed_ports | Evaluates the set of ports exposed. Allows configuring allowlist or blocklist behavior. If type=allowlist, then any ports found exposed that are not in the list will cause the trigger to fire. If type=denylist, then any ports exposed that are in the list will cause the trigger to fire. | actual_dockerfile_only | Only evaluate against a user-provided dockerfile, skip evaluation on inferred/guessed dockerfiles. Default is False. | true |
no_dockerfile_provided | Triggers if anchore analysis was performed without supplying the actual image Dockerfile. | | | |
Gate: files
Checks against files in the analyzed image including file content, file names, and filesystem attributes.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
content_regex_match | Triggers for each file where the content search analyzer has found a match using configured regexes in the analyzer_config.yaml “content_search” section. If the parameter is set, the trigger will only fire for files that matched the named regex. Refer to your analyzer_config.yaml for the regex values. | regex_name | Regex string that also appears in the FILECHECK_CONTENTMATCH analyzer parameter in analyzer configuration, to limit the check to. If set, will only fire trigger when the specific named regex was found in a file. | .password. |
name_match | Triggers if a file exists in the container that has a filename that matches the provided regex. This does have a performance impact on policy evaluation. | regex | Regex to apply to file names for match. | .*.pem |
attribute_match | Triggers if a filename exists in the container that has attributes that match those which are provided . This check has a performance impact on policy evaluation. | filename | Filename to check against provided checksum. | /etc/passwd |
attribute_match | Triggers if a filename exists in the container that has attributes that match those which are provided . This check has a performance impact on policy evaluation. | checksum_algorithm | Checksum algorithm | sha256 |
attribute_match | Triggers if a filename exists in the container that has attributes that match those which are provided . This check has a performance impact on policy evaluation. | checksum | Checksum of file. | 832cd0f75b227d13aac82b1f70b7f90191a4186c151f9db50851d209c45ede11 |
attribute_match | Triggers if a filename exists in the container that has attributes that match those which are provided . This check has a performance impact on policy evaluation. | checksum_match | Checksum operation to perform. | equals |
attribute_match | Triggers if a filename exists in the container that has attributes that match those which are provided . This check has a performance impact on policy evaluation. | mode | File mode of file. | 00644 |
attribute_match | Triggers if a filename exists in the container that has attributes that match those which are provided . This check has a performance impact on policy evaluation. | mode_op | File mode operation to perform. | equals |
attribute_match | Triggers if a filename exists in the container that has attributes that match those which are provided . This check has a performance impact on policy evaluation. | skip_missing | If set to true, do not fire this trigger if the file is not present. If set to false, fire this trigger ignoring the other parameter settings. | true |
suid_or_guid_set | Fires for each file found to have suid or sgid bit set. | | | |
Gate: passwd_file
Content checks for /etc/passwd for things like usernames, group ids, shells, or full entries.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
content_not_available | Triggers if the /etc/passwd file is not present/stored in the evaluated image. | | | |
denylist_usernames | Triggers if specified username is found in the /etc/passwd file | user_names | List of usernames that will cause the trigger to fire if found in /etc/passwd. | daemon,ftp |
denylist_userids | Triggers if specified user id is found in the /etc/passwd file | user_ids | List of userids (numeric) that will cause the trigger to fire if found in /etc/passwd. | 0,1 |
denylist_groupids | Triggers if specified group id is found in the /etc/passwd file | group_ids | List of groupids (numeric) that will cause the trigger ot fire if found in /etc/passwd. | 999,20 |
denylist_shells | Triggers if specified login shell for any user is found in the /etc/passwd file | shells | List of shell commands to denylist. | /bin/bash,/bin/zsh |
denylist_full_entry | Triggers if entire specified passwd entry is found in the /etc/passwd file. | entry | Full entry to match in /etc/passwd. | ftp:x:14:50:FTP User:/var/ftp:/sbin/nologin |
Gate: packages
Distro package checks
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
required_package | Triggers if the specified package and optionally a specific version is not found in the image. | name | Name of package that must be found installed in image. | libssl |
required_package | Triggers if the specified package and optionally a specific version is not found in the image. | version | Optional version of package for exact version match. | 1.10.3rc3 |
required_package | Triggers if the specified package and optionally a specific version is not found in the image. | version_match_type | The type of comparison to use for version if a version is provided. | exact |
verify | Check package integrity against package db in the image. Triggers for changes or removal or content in all or the selected “dirs” parameter if provided, and can filter type of check with the “check_only” parameter. | only_packages | List of package names to limit verification. | libssl,openssl |
verify | Check package integrity against package db in the image. Triggers for changes or removal or content in all or the selected “dirs” parameter if provided, and can filter type of check with the “check_only” parameter. | only_directories | List of directories to limit checks so as to avoid checks on all dir. | /usr,/var/lib |
verify | Check package integrity against package db in the image. Triggers for changes or removal or content in all or the selected “dirs” parameter if provided, and can filter type of check with the “check_only” parameter. | check | Check to perform instead of all. | changed |
denylist | Triggers if the evaluated image has a package installed that matches the named package optionally with a specific version as well. | name | Package name to denylist. | openssh-server |
denylist | Triggers if the evaluated image has a package installed that matches the named package optionally with a specific version as well. | version | Specific version of package to denylist. | 1.0.1 |
Gate: vulnerabilities
CVE/Vulnerability checks.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | package_type | Only trigger for specific package type. | all |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | severity_comparison | The type of comparison to perform for severity evaluation. | > |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | severity | Severity to compare against. | high |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | cvss_v3_base_score_comparison | The type of comparison to perform for CVSS v3 base score evaluation. | > |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | cvss_v3_base_score | CVSS v3 base score to compare against. | None |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | cvss_v3_exploitability_score_comparison | The type of comparison to perform for CVSS v3 exploitability sub score evaluation. | > |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | cvss_v3_exploitability_score | CVSS v3 exploitability sub score to compare against. | None |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | cvss_v3_impact_score_comparison | The type of comparison to perform for CVSS v3 impact sub score evaluation. | > |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | cvss_v3_impact_score | CVSS v3 impact sub score to compare against. | None |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | fix_available | If present, the fix availability for the vulnerability record must match the value of this parameter. | true |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | vendor_only | If True, an available fix for this CVE must not be explicitly marked as wont be addressed by the vendor | true |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | max_days_since_creation | If provided, this CVE must be older than the days provided to trigger. | 7 |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | max_days_since_fix | If provided (only evaluated when fix_available option is also set to true), the fix first observed time must be older than days provided, to trigger. | 30 |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | vendor_cvss_v3_base_score_comparison | The type of comparison to perform for vendor specified CVSS v3 base score evaluation. | > |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | vendor_cvss_v3_base_score | Vendor CVSS v3 base score to compare against. | None |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | vendor_cvss_v3_exploitability_score_comparison | The type of comparison to perform for vendor specified CVSS v3 exploitability sub score evaluation. | > |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | vendor_cvss_v3_exploitability_score | Vendor CVSS v3 exploitability sub score to compare against. | None |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | vendor_cvss_v3_impact_score_comparison | The type of comparison to perform for vendor specified CVSS v3 impact sub score evaluation. | > |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | vendor_cvss_v3_impact_score | Vendor CVSS v3 impact sub score to compare against. | None |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | package_path_exclude | The regex to evaluate against the package path to exclude vulnerabilities | .test.jar |
package | Triggers if a found vulnerability in an image meets the comparison criteria. | inherited_from_base | If true, only show vulns inherited from the base, if false than only show vulns not inherited from the base. Don’t specify to include vulns from the base image and the current image. | True |
denylist | Triggers if any of a list of specified vulnerabilities has been detected in the image. | vulnerability_ids | List of vulnerability IDs, will cause the trigger to fire if any are detected. | CVE-2019-1234 |
denylist | Triggers if any of a list of specified vulnerabilities has been detected in the image. | vendor_only | If set to True, discard matches against this vulnerability if vendor has marked as will not fix in the vulnerability record. | True |
stale_feed_data | Triggers if the CVE data is older than the window specified by the parameter MAXAGE (unit is number of days). | max_days_since_sync | Fire the trigger if the last sync was more than this number of days ago. | 10 |
vulnerability_data_unavailable | Triggers if vulnerability data is unavailable for the image’s distro packages such as rpms or dpkg. Non-OS packages like npms and java are not considered in this evaluation | | | |
Gate: licenses
License checks against found software licenses in the container image
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
denylist_exact_match | Triggers if the evaluated image has a package installed with software distributed under the specified (exact match) license(s). | licenses | List of license names to denylist exactly. | GPLv2+,GPL-3+,BSD-2-clause |
denylist_exact_match | Triggers if the evaluated image has a package installed with software distributed under the specified (exact match) license(s). | package_type | Only trigger for specific package type. | all |
denylist_partial_match | triggers if the evaluated image has a package installed with software distributed under the specified (substring match) license(s) | licenses | List of strings to do substring match for denylist. | LGPL,BSD |
denylist_partial_match | triggers if the evaluated image has a package installed with software distributed under the specified (substring match) license(s) | package_type | Only trigger for specific package type. | all |
Gate: ruby_gems
Ruby Gem Checks
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
newer_version_found_in_feed | Triggers if an installed GEM is not the latest version according to GEM data feed. | | | |
not_found_in_feed | Triggers if an installed GEM is not in the official GEM database, according to GEM data feed. | | | |
version_not_found_in_feed | Triggers if an installed GEM version is not listed in the official GEM feed as a valid version. | | | |
denylist | Triggers if the evaluated image has a GEM package installed that matches the specified name and version. | name | Gem name to denylist. | time_diff |
denylist | Triggers if the evaluated image has a GEM package installed that matches the specified name and version. | version | Optional version to denylist specifically. | 0.2.9 |
feed_data_unavailable | Triggers if anchore does not have access to the GEM data feed. | | | |
Gate: npms
NPM Checks
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
newer_version_in_feed | Triggers if an installed NPM is not the latest version according to NPM data feed. | | | |
unknown_in_feeds | Triggers if an installed NPM is not in the official NPM database, according to NPM data feed. | | | |
version_not_in_feeds | Triggers if an installed NPM version is not listed in the official NPM feed as a valid version. | | | |
denylisted_name_version | Triggers if the evaluated image has an NPM package installed that matches the name and optionally a version specified in the parameters. | name | Npm package name to denylist. | time_diff |
denylisted_name_version | Triggers if the evaluated image has an NPM package installed that matches the name and optionally a version specified in the parameters. | version | Npm package version to denylist specifically. | 0.2.9 |
feed_data_unavailable | Triggers if the system does not have access to the NPM data feed. | | | |
Gate: secret_scans
Checks for secrets and content found in the image using configured regexes found in the “secret_search” section of analyzer_config.yaml.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
content_regex_checks | Triggers if the secret content search analyzer has found any matches with the configured and named regexes. Checks can be configured to trigger if a match is found or is not found (selected using match_type parameter). Matches are filtered by the content_regex_name and filename_regex if they are set. The content_regex_name shoud be a value from the “secret_search” section of the analyzer_config.yaml. | content_regex_name | Name of content regexps configured in the analyzer that match if found in the image, instead of matching all. Names available by default are: [‘AWS_ACCESS_KEY’, ‘AWS_SECRET_KEY’, ‘PRIV_KEY’, ‘DOCKER_AUTH’, ‘API_KEY’]. | AWS_ACCESS_KEY |
content_regex_checks | Triggers if the secret content search analyzer has found any matches with the configured and named regexes. Checks can be configured to trigger if a match is found or is not found (selected using match_type parameter). Matches are filtered by the content_regex_name and filename_regex if they are set. The content_regex_name shoud be a value from the “secret_search” section of the analyzer_config.yaml. | filename_regex | Regexp to filter the content matched files by. | /etc/.* |
content_regex_checks | Triggers if the secret content search analyzer has found any matches with the configured and named regexes. Checks can be configured to trigger if a match is found or is not found (selected using match_type parameter). Matches are filtered by the content_regex_name and filename_regex if they are set. The content_regex_name shoud be a value from the “secret_search” section of the analyzer_config.yaml. | match_type | Set to define the type of match - trigger if match is found (default) or not found. | found |
Checks against image metadata, such as size, OS, distro, architecture, etc.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
attribute | Triggers if a named image metadata value matches the given condition. | attribute | Attribute name to be checked. | size |
attribute | Triggers if a named image metadata value matches the given condition. | check | The operation to perform the evaluation. | > |
attribute | Triggers if a named image metadata value matches the given condition. | value | Value used in comparison. | 1073741824 |
Gate: always
Triggers that fire unconditionally if present in policy, useful for things like testing and deny-listing.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
always | Fires if present in a policy being evaluated. Useful for things like deny-listing images or testing mappings and allowlists by using this trigger in combination with policy mapping rules. | | | |
Gate: retrieved_files
Checks against content and/or presence of files retrieved at analysis time from an image
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
content_not_available | Triggers if the specified file is not present/stored in the evaluated image. | path | The path of the file to verify has been retrieved during analysis | /etc/httpd.conf |
content_regex | Evaluation of regex on retrieved file content | path | The path of the file to verify has been retrieved during analysis | /etc/httpd.conf |
content_regex | Evaluation of regex on retrieved file content | check | The type of check to perform with the regex | match |
content_regex | Evaluation of regex on retrieved file content | regex | The regex to evaluate against the content of the file | .SSlEnabled. |
Gate: Malware
Trigger | Description | Parameters |
---|
scans | Triggers if any malware scanner has found any matches in the image. | |
scan_not_run | Triggers if no scan was found for the image. | |
Gate: Tag Drift
Compares the SBOM from the evaluated image’s tag and the tag’s previous image, if found. Provides triggers to detect packages added, removed or modified.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
packages_added | Checks to see if any packages have been added. | package_type | Package type to filter for only specific types. If ommitted, then all types are evaluated. | apk |
packages_removed | Checks to see if any packages have been removed. | package_type | Package type to filter for only specific types. If ommitted, then all types are evaluated. | apk |
packages_modified | Checks to see if any packages have been modified. | package_type | Package type to filter for only specific types. If ommitted, then all types are evaluated. | apk |
Gate: Image Source Drift
Triggers for evaluating diffs of an image’s source repo sbom and the built image. Operates on the diffs defined by ‘contains’ relationships where the image is the ‘source’ and the source revisions that are the ’target’ for the relationship.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
package_downgraded | Checks to see if any packages have a lower version in the built image than specified in the input source sboms | package_types | Types of package to filter by | java,npm |
package_removed | Checks to see if any packages are not installed that were expected based on the image’s related input source sboms | package_types | Types of package to filter by | java,npm |
no_related_sources | Checks to see if there are any source sboms related to the image. Findings indicate that the image does not have a source sbom to detect drift against | | | |
| | | | |
Gate: Ancestry
Checks the image ancestry against approved images.
Trigger Name | Description | Parameter | Description | Example |
---|
allowed_base_image_digest | Checks to see if base image is approved | base_digest | List of approved base image digests. | sha256:123abc |
allowed_base_image_tag | Checks to see if base image is approved | base_tag | List of approved base image tags. | docker.io/debian:latest |
no_ancestors_analyzed | Checks to see if the image has a known ancestor | | | |
Next Steps
Now that you have a good grasp on the core concepts and architecture, check out the Requirements section for running Anchore.
3 - Remediation
After Anchore analyzes images, discovers their contents, and matches vulnerabilities, it can suggest possible actions that can be taken.
These actions range from adding a Healthcheck to your Dockerfile, to upgrading a package version.
Since the solutions for resolving vulnerabilities can vary, and may require several different forms of remediation and intervention, Anchore provides the capability to plan out your course of action
Action Plans
Action plans group up the resolutions that may be taken to address the vulnerabilities or issues found in a particular image, and provide a way for you to take “action”.
Currently, we support one type of Action Plan, which can be used to notify an existing endpoint configuration of those resolutions. This is a great way to facilitate communication across teams when vulnerabilities need to be addressed.
Here’s an example JSON that describes an Action Plan for notifications:
{
"type": "notification",
"image_tag": "docker.io/alpine:latest",
"image_digest": "sha256:c0e9560cda118f9ec63ddefb4a173a2b2a0347082d7dff7dc14272e7841a5b5a",
"bundle_id": "anchore_default_bundle",
"resolutions": [
{
"trigger_ids": ["CVE-2020-11-09-fake"],
"content": "This is a Resolution for the CVE",
}
],
"subject": "Actions required for image: alpine:latest",
"message": "These are some issues Anchore found in alpine:latest, and how to resolve them",
"endpoint": "smtp",
"configuration_id": "cda118f9ec63ddefb4a173a2b2a03"
}
Parts:
- type: The type of action plan being submitted (currently, only notification supported)
- image_tag: The full image tag of the image requiring action
- image_tag: The image digest of the image requiring action
- bundle_id: the id of the policy bundle that discovered the vulnerabilities
- resolutions: A list composed of the remediations and corresponding trigger IDs
- subject: The subject line for the action plan notification
- message: The body of the message for the action plan notification
- endpoint: The type of notification endpoint the action plan will be sent to
- configuration_id: The uuid of the notification configuration for the above endpoint