CIS Scans

Rancher can run a security scan to check whether Kubernetes is deployed according to security best practices as defined in the CIS Kubernetes Benchmark. The CIS scans can run on any Kubernetes cluster, including hosted Kubernetes providers such as EKS, AKS, and GKE.

The rancher-cis-benchmark app leverages kube-bench, an open-source tool from Aqua Security, to check clusters for CIS Kubernetes Benchmark compliance. Also, to generate a cluster-wide report, the application utilizes Sonobuoy for report aggregation.

• About the CIS Benchmark
• About the Generated Report
• Test Profiles
• About Skipped and Not Applicable Tests
• Roles-based Access Control
• Configuration
• How-to Guides
  • Installing CIS Benchmark
  • Uninstalling CIS Benchmark
  • Running a Scan
  • Running a Scan Periodically on a Schedule
  • Skipping Tests
  • Viewing Reports
  • Enabling Alerting for rancher-cis-benchmark
  • Configuring Alerts for a Periodic Scan on a Schedule
  • Creating a Custom Benchmark Version for Running a Cluster Scan

About the CIS Benchmark

The Center for Internet Security is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, formed in October 2000, with a mission to “identify, develop, validate, promote, and sustain best practice solutions for cyber defense and build and lead communities to enable an environment of trust in cyberspace”. The organization is headquartered in East Greenbush, New York, with members including large corporations, government agencies, and academic institutions.

CIS Benchmarks are best practices for the secure configuration of a target system. CIS Benchmarks are developed through the generous volunteer efforts of subject matter experts, technology vendors, public and private community members, and the CIS Benchmark Development team.

The official Benchmark documents are available through the CIS website. The sign-up form to access the documents is here.

About the Generated Report

Each scan generates a report can be viewed in the Rancher UI and can be downloaded in CSV format.

By default, the CIS Benchmark v1.6 is used.

The Benchmark version is included in the generated report.

The Benchmark provides recommendations of two types: Scored and Not Scored. Recommendations marked as Not Scored in the Benchmark are not included in the generated report.

Some tests are designated as “Not Applicable.” These tests will not be run on any CIS scan because of the way that Rancher provisions RKE clusters. For information on how test results can be audited, and why some tests are designated to be not applicable, refer to Rancher’s self-assessment guide for the corresponding Kubernetes version.

The report contains the following information:

Refer to the table in the cluster hardening guide for information on which versions of Kubernetes, the Benchmark, Rancher, and our cluster hardening guide correspond to each other. Also refer to the hardening guide for configuration files of CIS-compliant clusters and information on remediating failed tests.

Test Profiles

The following profiles are available:

• Generic CIS 1.5
• Generic CIS 1.6
• RKE permissive 1.5
• RKE hardened 1.5
• RKE permissive 1.6
• RKE hardened 1.6
• EKS
• GKE
• RKE2 permissive 1.5
• RKE2 permissive 1.5

You also have the ability to customize a profile by saving a set of tests to skip.

All profiles will have a set of not applicable tests that will be skipped during the CIS scan. These tests are not applicable based on how a RKE cluster manages Kubernetes.

There are two types of RKE cluster scan profiles:

• Permissive: This profile has a set of tests that have been will be skipped as these tests will fail on a default RKE Kubernetes cluster. Besides the list of skipped tests, the profile will also not run the not applicable tests.
• Hardened: This profile will not skip any tests, except for the non-applicable tests.

The EKS and GKE cluster scan profiles are based on CIS Benchmark versions that are specific to those types of clusters.

In order to pass the “Hardened” profile, you will need to follow the steps on the hardening guide and use the cluster.yml defined in the hardening guide to provision a hardened cluster.

The default profile and the supported CIS benchmark version depends on the type of cluster that will be scanned:

The rancher-cis-benchmark supports the CIS 1.6 Benchmark version.

• For RKE Kubernetes clusters, the RKE Permissive 1.6 profile is the default.
• EKS and GKE have their own CIS Benchmarks published by kube-bench. The corresponding test profiles are used by default for those clusters.
• For RKE2 Kubernetes clusters, the RKE2 Permissive 1.5 profile is the default.
• For cluster types other than RKE, RKE2, EKS and GKE, the Generic CIS 1.5 profile will be used by default.

About Skipped and Not Applicable Tests

For a list of skipped and not applicable tests, refer to this page.

For now, only user-defined skipped tests are marked as skipped in the generated report.

Any skipped tests that are defined as being skipped by one of the default profiles are marked as not applicable.

Roles-based Access Control

For information about permissions, refer to this page.

Configuration

For more information about configuring the custom resources for the scans, profiles, and benchmark versions, refer to this page.

How-to Guides

• Installing rancher-cis-benchmark
• Uninstalling rancher-cis-benchmark
• Running a Scan
• Running a Scan Periodically on a Schedule
• Skipping Tests
• Viewing Reports
• Enabling Alerting for rancher-cis-benchmark
• Configuring Alerts for a Periodic Scan on a Schedule

• Creating a Custom Benchmark Version for Running a Cluster Scan

  Installing CIS Benchmark

1. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. On the Clusters page, go to the cluster where you want to install CIS Benchmark and click Explore.
3. In the left navigation bar, click Apps & Marketplace > Charts.
4. Click CIS Benchmark
5. Click Install.

Result: The CIS scan application is deployed on the Kubernetes cluster.

Uninstalling CIS Benchmark

1. From the Cluster Dashboard, go to the left navigation bar and click Apps & Marketplace > Installed Apps.
2. Go to the cis-operator-system namespace and check the boxes next to rancher-cis-benchmark-crd and rancher-cis-benchmark.
3. Click Delete and confirm Delete.

Result: The rancher-cis-benchmark application is uninstalled.

Running a Scan

When a ClusterScan custom resource is created, it launches a new CIS scan on the cluster for the chosen ClusterScanProfile.

Note: There is currently a limitation of running only one CIS scan at a time for a cluster. If you create multiple ClusterScan custom resources, they will be run one after the other by the operator, and until one scan finishes, the rest of the ClusterScan custom resources will be in the “Pending” state.

To run a scan,

1. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. On the Clusters page, go to the cluster where you want to run a CIS scan and click Explore.
3. Click CIS Benchmark > Scan.
4. Click Create.
5. Choose a cluster scan profile. The profile determines which CIS Benchmark version will be used and which tests will be performed. If you choose the Default profile, then the CIS Operator will choose a profile applicable to the type of Kubernetes cluster it is installed on.
6. Click Create.

Result: A report is generated with the scan results. To see the results, click the name of the scan that appears.

Running a Scan Periodically on a Schedule

To run a ClusterScan on a schedule,

1. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. On the Clusters page, go to the cluster where you want to run a CIS scan and click Explore.
3. Click CIS Benchmark > Scan.
4. Choose a cluster scan profile. The profile determines which CIS Benchmark version will be used and which tests will be performed. If you choose the Default profile, then the CIS Operator will choose a profile applicable to the type of Kubernetes cluster it is installed on.
5. Choose the option Run scan on a schedule.
6. Enter a valid cron schedule expression in the field Schedule.
7. Choose a Retention count, which indicates the number of reports maintained for this recurring scan. By default this count is 3. When this retention limit is reached, older reports will get purged.
8. Click Create.

Result: The scan runs and reschedules to run according to the cron schedule provided. The Next Scan value indicates the next time this scan will run again.

A report is generated with the scan results every time the scan runs. To see the latest results, click the name of the scan that appears.

You can also see the previous reports by choosing the report from the Reports dropdown on the scan detail page.

Skipping Tests

CIS scans can be run using test profiles with user-defined skips.

To skip tests, you will create a custom CIS scan profile. A profile contains the configuration for the CIS scan, which includes the benchmark versions to use and any specific tests to skip in that benchmark.

1. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. On the Clusters page, go to the cluster where you want to run a CIS scan and click Explore.
3. Click CIS Benchmark > Profile.

4. From here, you can create a profile in multiple ways. To make a new profile, click Create and fill out the form in the UI. To make a new profile based on an existing profile, go to the existing profile and click ⋮ Clone. If you are filling out the form, add the tests to skip using the test IDs, using the relevant CIS Benchmark as a reference. If you are creating the new test profile as YAML, you will add the IDs of the tests to skip in the skipTests directive. You will also give the profile a name:

   apiVersion: cis.cattle.io/v1
   kind: ClusterScanProfile
   metadata:
     annotations:
       meta.helm.sh/release-name: clusterscan-operator
       meta.helm.sh/release-namespace: cis-operator-system
     labels:
       app.kubernetes.io/managed-by: Helm
     name: "<example-profile>"
   spec:
     benchmarkVersion: cis-1.5
     skipTests:
       - "1.1.20"
       - "1.1.21"

5. Click Create.

Result: A new CIS scan profile is created.

When you run a scan that uses this profile, the defined tests will be skipped during the scan. The skipped tests will be marked in the generated report as Skip.

Viewing Reports

To view the generated CIS scan reports,

1. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Cluster Management.
2. On the Clusters page, go to the cluster where you want to run a CIS scan and click Explore.
3. Click CIS Benchmark > Scan.
4. The Scans page will show the generated reports. To see a detailed report, go to a scan report and click the name.

One can download the report from the Scans list or from the scan detail page.

Enabling Alerting for rancher-cis-benchmark

Alerts can be configured to be sent out for a scan that runs on a schedule.

Prerequisite:

Before enabling alerts for rancher-cis-benchmark, make sure to install the rancher-monitoring application and configure the Receivers and Routes. For more information, see this section.

While configuring the routes for rancher-cis-benchmark alerts, you can specify the matching using the key-value pair job: rancher-cis-scan. An example route configuration is here.

While installing or upgrading the rancher-cis-benchmark Helm chart, set the following flag to true in the values.yaml:

alerts:
  enabled: true

Configuring Alerts for a Periodic Scan on a Schedule

It is possible to run a ClusterScan on a schedule.

A scheduled scan can also specify if you should receive alerts when the scan completes.

Alerts are supported only for a scan that runs on a schedule.

The CIS Benchmark application supports two types of alerts:

• Alert on scan completion: This alert is sent out when the scan run finishes. The alert includes details including the ClusterScan’s name and the ClusterScanProfile name.
• Alert on scan failure: This alert is sent out if there are some test failures in the scan run or if the scan is in a Fail state.

Prerequisite:

Before enabling alerts for rancher-cis-benchmark, make sure to install the rancher-monitoring application and configure the Receivers and Routes. For more information, see this section.

While configuring the routes for rancher-cis-benchmark alerts, you can specify the matching using the key-value pair job: rancher-cis-scan. An example route configuration is here.

To configure alerts for a scan that runs on a schedule,

1. Please enable alerts on the rancher-cis-benchmark application (#enabling-alerting-for-rancher-cis-benchmark)
2. In the upper left corner, click ☰ > Cluster Management.
3. On the Clusters page, go to the cluster where you want to run a CIS scan and click Explore.
4. Click CIS Benchmark > Scan.
5. Click Create.
6. Choose a cluster scan profile. The profile determines which CIS Benchmark version will be used and which tests will be performed. If you choose the Default profile, then the CIS Operator will choose a profile applicable to the type of Kubernetes cluster it is installed on.
7. Choose the option Run scan on a schedule.
8. Enter a valid cron schedule expression in the field Schedule.
9. Check the boxes next to the Alert types under Alerting.
10. Optional: Choose a Retention Count, which indicates the number of reports maintained for this recurring scan. By default this count is 3. When this retention limit is reached, older reports will get purged.
11. Click Create.

Result: The scan runs and reschedules to run according to the cron schedule provided. Alerts are sent out when the scan finishes if routes and receiver are configured under rancher-monitoring application.

A report is generated with the scan results every time the scan runs. To see the latest results, click the name of the scan that appears.

Creating a Custom Benchmark Version for Running a Cluster Scan

There could be some Kubernetes cluster setups that require custom configurations of the Benchmark tests. For example, the path to the Kubernetes config files or certs might be different than the standard location where the upstream CIS Benchmarks look for them.

It is now possible to create a custom Benchmark Version for running a cluster scan using the rancher-cis-benchmark application.

For details, see this page.