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KICS GitHub Action

License: GPL-3.0 Latest Release Open Issues

Integrate KICS into your GitHub workflows

KICS (pronounced as 'kick-s') or Kicscan is an open source solution for static code analysis of Infrastructure as Code.

Keeping Infrastructure as Code Secure (in short KICS) is a must-have for any cloud native project. With KICS, finding security vulnerabilities, compliance issues, and infrastructure misconfigurations happens early in the development cycle, when fixing these is straightforward and cheap.

It is as simple as running a CLI tool, making it easy to integrate into any project CI.

Supported Platforms

Terraform    Kubernetes    Docker   

CloudFormation    Ansible    Helm   

OpenAPI    gRPC    Azure Resource Manager    Google Deployment Manager   

Cloud Deployment Kit    SAM    Docker Compose    Knative   

Crossplane    Pulumi    ServerlessFW   

Azure BluePrints    GitHub Workflows    OpenTofu    NIFCloud   

Beta Features

Databricks    TencentCloud   

In order to run the Databricks and TencentCloud queries, use the --experimental-queries flag when running KICS.

Official documentation page docs.kics.io

Ensure that you're using the latest KICS Github Action release when creating a workflow.

Inputs

Variable Example Value   Description   Type Required Default
enable_comments true Enable pull request report comments Boolean No false
enable_jobs_summary true Enable report as jobs summary Boolean No false
enable_annotations true Enable annotations report Boolean No true
comments_with_queries true Add queries in th pull request report comments (available when enable_comments = true) Boolean No false
excluded_column_for_comments_with_queries description_id,similarity_id,search_line,search_value Excluded columns for the comment with queries, accepts a comma separated list String No description_id,similarity_id,search_line,search_value
path terraform/main.tf,Dockerfile paths to a file or directories to scan, comma separated list String Yes N/A
ignore_on_exit results defines which non-zero exit codes should be ignored (all, results, errors, none) String No none
fail_on high,medium comma separated list of which severities returns exit code !=0 String No high,medium,low,info
timeout 75 number of seconds the query has to execute before being canceled String No 60
profiling CPU turns on profiler that prints resource consumption in the logs during the execution (CPU, MEM) String No N/A
config_path ./kics.config path to configuration file String No N/A
platform_type terraform,ansible case insensitive list of platform types to scan String No All platforms
exclude_paths ./shouldNotScan/*,somefile.txt exclude paths from scan, supports glob, comma separated list String No N/A
exclude_queries a227ec01-f97a-4084-91a4-47b350c1db54 exclude queries by providing the query ID, comma separated list String No N/A
exclude_categories 'Observability,Networking and Firewall' exclude categories by providing its name, comma separated list String No N/A
exclude_results 'd4a1fa80-d9d8-450f-87c2-e1f6669c41f8' exclude results by providing the similarity ID of a result String No N/A
exclude_severities 'info,low' exclude results by providing the severity of a result String No N/A
exclude_gitignore (available only from KICS version 1.6) disables the exclusion of paths specified within .gitignore file Boolean No false
include_queries a227ec01-f97a-4084-91a4-47b350c1db54 include only specified list of queries to the scan, cannot be provided with query exclusion flags String No N/A
output_formats 'json,sarif' formats in which the results report will be exported String No json
output_path myResults/ file path to store result in json format String No "./"
payload_path /tmp/mypayload.json file path to store source internal representation in JSON format String No N/A
queries path to directory with queries (default "./assets/queries") String No ./assets/queries downloaded with the binaries
verbose true verbose scan Boolean No false
type Ansible,Dockerfile case insensitive comma-separated list of platform types to scan (Ansible, AzureResourceManager, CloudFormation, Dockerfile, Kubernetes, OpenAPI, Terraform) String No all types
bom true include bill of materials (BoM) in results.json output Boolean No false
disable_full_descriptions false disable request for full descriptions and use default vulnerability descriptions Boolean false
disable_secrets false disable secrets detection Boolean false
secrets_regexes_path ./mydir/secrets-config.json path to custom secrets regex rules configuration file String No N/A
libraries_path ./myLibsDir path to directory with Rego libraries String No N/A
cloud_provider aws,azure list of cloud providers to scan (alicloud, aws, azure, gcp) String No N/A

Simple usage example

    # Steps represent a sequence of tasks that will be executed as part of the job
    steps:
    # Checks-out your repository under $GITHUB_WORKSPACE, so your job can access it
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    # Scan Iac with kics
    - name: run kics Scan
      uses: checkmarx/[email protected]
      with:
        # scanning two directories: ./terraform/ ./cfn-templates/ plus a single file
        path: 'terraform,cfn-templates,my-other-sub-folder/Dockerfile'
        output_path: myResults/
    # Display the results in json format
    - name: display kics results
      run: |
        cat myResults/results.json

Workflow failures

By default KICS will fail your workflow on any results found.

Don't fail on results

If you want KICS to ignore the results and return exit status code 0 unless a KICS engine error happens:

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: run kics Scan
      uses: checkmarx/[email protected]
      with:
        path: 'terraform'
        ignore_on_exit: results
        output_path: myResults/
    - name: display kics results
      run: |
        cat myResults/results.json

Fail by severity usage example

If want your pipeline just to fail on HIGH and MEDIUM severity results and KICS engine execution errors:

    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: run kics Scan
      uses: checkmarx/[email protected]
      with:
        path: 'terraform,my-other-sub-folder/Dockerfile'
        fail_on: high,medium
        output_path: myResults/
    - name: display kics results
      run: |
        cat myResults/results.json

Enabling Pull Request Comment

GITHUB_TOKEN enables this github action to access github API and post comments in a pull request:

name: Test KICS action PR comment

on:
  pull_request:

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@v3
    - name: run kics Scan
      uses: checkmarx/[email protected]
      with:
        path: test/samples/positive1.tf,test/samples/positive2.tf
        token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
        output_path: myResults/
        ignore_on_exit: results
        enable_comments: true

PR Comment Example

KICS Logo

KICS version: 2.1.3

Category Results
HIGH HIGH 3
MEDIUM MEDIUM 2
LOW LOW 0
INFO INFO 0
TRACE TRACE 0
TOTAL TOTAL 5
Metric Values
placeholder Files scanned 2
placeholder Files parsed 2
placeholder Files failed to scan 0
placeholder Total queries 821
placeholder Queries failed to execute 0
placeholder Execution time 13s

Annotations

After scanning, kics-github-action will add the results as annotations in a pull request:

annotations-preview

Profiling KICS

You can only enable one profiler at a time, CPU or MEM.

📝   Please note that execution time may be impacted by enabling performance profiler due to sampling

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: run kics Scan
        uses: checkmarx/[email protected]
        with:
          path: 'terraform'
          profiling: MEM
          output_path: myResults/
      - name: display kics results
        run: |
          cat myResults/results.json

Uploading SARIF report

name: scan with KICS and upload SARIF

on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [master]

jobs:
  kics-job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: kics-action
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Mkdir results-dir
        # make sure results dir is created
        run: mkdir -p results-dir
      - name: Run KICS Scan with SARIF result
        uses: checkmarx/[email protected]
        with:
          path: 'terraform'
          # when provided with a directory on output_path
          # it will generate the specified reports file named 'results.{extension}'
          # in this example it will generate:
          # - results-dir/results.json
          # - results-dir/results.sarif
          ignore_on_exit: results
          output_path: results-dir
          platform_type: terraform
          output_formats: 'json,sarif'
          exclude_paths: "terraform/gcp/big_data.tf,terraform/azure"
          # seek query id in it's metadata.json
          exclude_queries: 0437633b-daa6-4bbc-8526-c0d2443b946e
      - name: Show results
        run: |
          cat results-dir/results.sarif
          cat results-dir/results.json
      - name: Upload SARIF file
        uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        with:
          sarif_file: results-dir/results.sarif

Using configuration file

Check configuration file reference for more options.

name: scan with KICS using config file

on:
  pull_request:
    branches: [master]

jobs:
  kics-job:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    name: kics-action
    steps:
      - name: Checkout repo
        uses: actions/checkout@v3
      - name: Mkdir results-dir
        # make sure results dir is created
        run: mkdir -p results-dir
      - name: Create config file
        # creating a heredoc config file
        run: |
          cat <<EOF >>kics.config
          {
            "exclude-categories": "Encryption",
            "exclude-paths": "terraform/gcp/big_data.tf,terraform/gcp/gcs.tf",
            "log-file": true,
            "minimal-ui": false,
            "no-color": false,
            "no-progress": true,
            "output-path": "./results-dir",
            "payload-path": "file path to store source internal representation in JSON format",
            "preview-lines": 5,
            "report-formats": "json,sarif",
            "type": "terraform",
            "verbose": true
          }
          EOF
      - name: Run KICS Scan using config
        uses: checkmarx/[email protected]
        with:
          path: 'terraform'
          config_path: ./kics.config
      - name: Upload SARIF file
        uses: github/codeql-action/upload-sarif@v3
        with:
          sarif_file: results-dir/results.sarif

How To Contribute

We welcome issues to and pull requests against this repository!

License

KICS Github Action

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.