Anchore Enterprise Windows Container Scanning

As of Enterprise 2.3.0, Anchore can analyze and provide vulnerability matches for Windows images. Anchore downloads, unpacks, and analyzes the windows image contents in a similar way, it does Linux-based images, providing OS information as well as discovered application packages like npms, gems, python, NuGet, and java archives.

Vulnerabilities for Windows images are matched against the detected OS version and KBs detected installed in the image. These are matched using data from the Microsoft Security Research Center (MSRC) data API.

Requirements

Analyzing windows images is supported out-of-the-box with no configuration changes, but to get vulnerability results, your deployment must:

  1. Deploy an on-premises feed service
  2. Have the microsoft driver enabled in the feed service
  3. The driver must have an API key configured for accessing Microsoft’s MSRC vulnerability data API
  4. The policy engine must have the microsoft feed enabled to be synced from the feed service

Configuring Microsoft Feeds

In the feed service configuration, enable the msrc driver and provide an api_key.

services:
  feeds:
    ...
    drivers:
      ...
      msrc:
        enabled: true
        api_key: <api key string obtained from signing-up at https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/developer>

Getting an API Key

  1. Visit: https://portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-us/developer
  2. Create an account or sign-in with GitHub
  3. Once logged-in, click ‘Create New Key’
  4. You should now see a screen with the title “Microsoft Security Update API”. Directly below that is “API Key”, click “Show” and copy that value into your configuration file. Example:

Microsoft Security Update API

Enabling the Feed in the Policy Engine

Once the feed service is configured to run the driver and fetch data from Microsoft, the policy engine must also be configured to pull that data from the feed service.

Ensure that your policy engine is using the on-premises feed service by checking the url field in the feeds configuration at the top level of the config.yaml on the policy engine(s). This is typically configured for you in a Helm chart deployment, but for quickstarts with Docker Compose, you’ll have to uncomment some lines to enable the feed service and configure the policy engine to use it. See the Quickstart for details.

feeds:
  ...
  url: <ensure this is set to the URL to reach your deployed feed service>
  selective_sync:
    enabled: true
    feeds:
      ...
      microsoft: true
      ...
  ...

Supported Windows Base Image Versions

The following are the MSRC Product IDs that Anchore can detect and provide vulnerability information for. These provide the basis for the main variants of the base Windows containers: Windows, ServerCore, NanoSerer, and IoTCore

Product ID Name
10951 Windows 10 Version 1703 for 32-bit Systems
10952 Windows 10 Version 1703 for x64-based Systems
10729 Windows 10 for 32-bit Systems
10735 Windows 10 for x64-based Systems
10789 Windows 10 Version 1511 for 32-bit Systems
10788 Windows 10 Version 1511 for x64-based Systems
10852 Windows 10 Version 1607 for 32-bit Systems
10853 Windows 10 Version 1607 for x64-based Systems
11497 Windows 10 Version 1803 for 32-bit Systems
11498 Windows 10 Version 1803 for x64-based Systems
11563 Windows 10 Version 1803 for ARM64-based Systems
11568 Windows 10 Version 1809 for 32-bit Systems
11569 Windows 10 Version 1809 for x64-based Systems
11570 Windows 10 Version 1809 for ARM64-based Systems
11453 Windows 10 Version 1709 for 32-bit Systems
11454 Windows 10 Version 1709 for x64-based Systems
11583 Windows 10 Version 1709 for ARM64-based Systems
11644 Windows 10 Version 1903 for 32-bit Systems
11645 Windows 10 Version 1903 for x64-based Systems
11646 Windows 10 Version 1903 for ARM64-based Systems
11712 Windows 10 Version 1909 for 32-bit Systems
11713 Windows 10 Version 1909 for x64-based Systems
11714 Windows 10 Version 1909 for ARM64-based Systems
10379 Windows Server 2012 (Server Core installation)
10543 Windows Server 2012 R2 (Server Core installation)
10816 Windows Server 2016
11571 Windows Server 2019
10855 Windows Server 2016 (Server Core installation)
11572 Windows Server 2019 (Server Core installation)
11499 Windows Server, version 1803 (Server Core Installation)
11466 Windows Server, version 1709 (Server Core Installation)
11647 Windows Server, version 1903 (Server Core installation)
11715 Windows Server, version 1909 (Server Core installation)

Windows OS Packages

Just as Linux images are scanned for packages such as RPMs, DPKG, and APK, Windows images are scanned for the installed components and Knowlege Base patches (KBs). When listing OS content on a Windows image, the results returned are KB identifiers that are numeric. Both the name and version will be identical and are the KB IDs.


Last modified April 27, 2020: Minor fixes to windows scanning (219c93f)