REM

Remote Compliance Check

Anchore Enterprise Remote Execution Manager (REM) enables an operator to run a STIG compliance check for a defined container within a Kubernetes Cluster. REM contains functionality to perform package management such as installation and removal of OpenSCAP, retrieval of generated results files, and upload capabilities to the compliance API. There is also a provided local data-store if upload functionality is disabled or unavailable.

Installation

REM releases are uploaded to a public AWS S3 bucket.

To install REM, you can use either the AWS CLI or cURL to retrieve both the binary and the default configuration for REM.

Retrieving the default configuration file is the same regardless of which operating system you’re using:

curl -o rem.yaml https://anchore-rem-releases.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v0.1.9/rem.yaml

macOS dmg

curl -o rem.dmg https://anchore-rem-releases.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v0.1.9/rem_0.1.9_darwin_amd64.dmg

macOS Tar

curl -o rem.tar.gz https://anchore-rem-releases.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v0.1.9/rem_0.1.9_darwin_amd64.tar.gz

Debian

curl -o rem.deb https://anchore-rem-releases.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v0.1.9/rem_0.1.9_linux_amd64.deb

RPM

curl -o rem.rpm https://anchore-rem-releases.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v0.1.9/rem_0.1.9_linux_amd64.rpm

Linux Tar

curl -o rem.tar.gz https://anchore-rem-releases.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v0.1.9/rem_0.1.9_linux_amd64.tar.gz

Windows

curl -o rem.zip https://anchore-rem-releases.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/v0.1.9/rem_0.1.9_windows_amd64.zip

Usage:

REM can work well out-of-the-box with minimal required configurations.

At the very least, REM needs to be able to authenticate with the Kubernetes API, know which command to run, and know which pod and container to connect to. If you have a Kube Config at ~/.kube/config, REM will use that by default.

To see how to configure REM with these minimal details, see the Pod Configuration section

Shell Completion

REM supports completion for BASH, Zsh, and Fish shells. Run rem completion -h for more information.

Configuration

REM will search for the configuration file in a few locations:

The following examples are listed in the order of precedence.

From the CLI you can pass a -f or --config flag with the path to the configuration file.

> rem -f /tmp/anchore/config.yaml

Setting an Environment variable:

> export REM_CONFIGPATH="/tmp/anchore/config.yaml"

Current directory of execution:

./rem.yaml
.rem/config.yaml

User home directory path:

~/.rem.yaml

XDG configured directory path:

rem/config.yaml

It is always recommended to use the configuration file that is attached to each release as an artifact. The example configuration file in the repository is a good reference for explaining which configuration key does what.

Pod configuration

This section will describe the minimum required configuration required for REM to work.

In the file, you can specify kubernetes pod information in the following section:

# This section tells REM the execution details for the STIG check report:
# Pod Name, Namespace, and Container Name are required so that REM knows where to exec the stig check
report:
  podName: "centos"
  nameSpace: "default"
  containerName: "centos"

  # These must be set via the file, and correspond to the command being executed in the container
  # For example, if your compliance check command looks like this:
  #   oscap xccdf eval --profile <profile> --results /tmp/anchore/result.xml --report /tmp/anchore/report.html target.xml
  # The values should for --results and --report should match the values of these configurations.
  # The file paths defined here are also where REM downloads the files from the container. You can think of it like this:
  #    docker cp container:/tmp/anchore/report.html /tmp/anhore/report.html
  reportFile: "/tmp/anchore/report.html" 
  resultFile: "/tmp/anchore/result.xml"

# REM supports Kubernetes Configuration in the following manner:
#   1. If you have a Kubeconfig at ~/.kube/config, you don't need to set any of these fields below, REM will just use that
#   2. If you want to explicitly specify kubernetes configuration details, you can do so in each field below (ignore path)
#   3. If you are running REM within Kubernetes, set path to "use-in-cluster" and set cluster to the cluster name and you don't need to set any of the other fields
kubeconfig:
  path: "" # set to "use-in-cluster" if running REM within a kubernetes container
  cluster: ""
  clusterCert: # base64 encoded cluster cert
  server:  # ex. https://kubernetes.docker.internal:6443
  user:
    type:  # valid: [private_key, token]
    clientCert: # if type==private_key, base64 encoded client cert
    privateKey: # if type==private_key, base64 encoded private key
    token: # plaintext service account token

As an alternative, or a way to override the setting in the configuration file on the command line, you can pass a few flags to set new values.

Here, <cmd> is the full oscap command to execute within the container, and the args before the double hyphen '--' are telling REM where to run the command
$ rem kexec -n <namespace> -p <pod> -c <container> -k <kubeconfig-path-override> -- <cmd>

Example (this will use kubeconfig at ~/.kube/config)
$ rem kexec -n default -p anchore-pod -c anchore-container -- oscap xccdf eval --profile standard --result /tmp/result.xml --report /tmp/report.html target.xml

Note: The double hyphen -- is important because it tells REM that all subsequent flags should be passed to the container command

A full list of the options supported by the rem kexec command can be found by running the command with the -h or --help option i.e.

rem kexec --help

Compliance Tool Installation

Enable the following section in the configuration file.

command:
  .
  ..
    oscap:
      # This boolean flag tells REM whether or not to try to install OpenSCAP into the container (if the command is oscap)
      installEnabled: true
    
      # This boolean flag tells REM whether or not to try to uninstall OpenSCAP from the container
      # (after the oscap command runs and the result/report files get downloaded)
      uninstallEnabled: true

After the installation option has been enabled this will allow the operator to manually install the compliance tool or allow REM to automatically install the missing tool needed to run the compliance check.

note: uninstallEnabled can be set to false if you intend on leaving the tool available.

Running the following will install OpenSCAP but this is not mandatory.

> rem kexec install oscap

Run a compliance check

There are two options on how to run the check. The first is from the command line. The second method is to have REM read it from the configuration file.

From the command line

> rem kexec oscap -- xccdf eval --profile xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_profile_stig --fetch-remote-resources --results /tmp/anchore/result.xml --report /tmp/anchore/report.html /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-rhel8-ds.xml

From configuration file

command:
  # If no command is specified through arguments passed to the application on the command line, this command will be used
  # Each element of the list is interpreted as part of the command
  # I.E. echo 'hello-world' > /tmp/test.txt would look like:
  #   cmd:
  #     - echo
  #     - 'hello-world' > /tmp/tst.txt
  cmd: oscap xccdf eval --profile xccdf_org.ssgproject.content_profile_stig --fetch-remote-resources --results /tmp/anchore/result.xml --report /tmp/anchore/report.html /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-rhel8-ds.xml

Once the check has completed the report and results file should be located in the set path passed into openSCAP.

Custom STIG targets

REM has the option to allow the operator to specify a custom target by setting a path under customTargetPath.

# If a custom OSCAP profile is desired, specify it's path here
# Note: this will be placed into a /tmp/anchore/ directory in the container at runtime, so the command being executed
customTargetPath: <local path to target>/custom.xml

Audit uploads

REM has an audit database which is used to track which compliance checks have been successfully run, this also serves as a method to ensure fault tolerance in the case where reports have not been uploaded do to unavailable service connections to Enterprise. REM will mark those uploads as incomplete allowing the operator to issue a flush command and push the remainders to Enterprise.

Database subcommand

To list the current state for all past transactions issue the following command:

> rem db list

In order to retreive detailed information about a transaction use the db get command with the id:

> rem db get 1

To push all results which have been marked as not uploaded, issue the follow command:

note: the –dryrun flag will show you the records which will be processed

> rem db upload
Last modified June 30, 2023