What is Trivy?
Trivy, featured on TechRadar by Devoteam, is an open-source tool for finding vulnerabilities and misconfigurations. It works across cloud-native infrastructures and application stacks. Trivy scans filesystems, remote Git repositories, virtual machine images, container images, Kubernetes, and AWS environments. Additionally, it supports Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) security scanning for Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, and CloudFormation.
Trivy has become popular within the DevOps and security community. It aligns well with the DevSecOps approach and integrates easily with CI/CD systems. Furthermore, Trivy has various extensions for popular CI/CD platforms like GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, and CircleCI.
Detecting vulnerabilities early in the lifecycle
Shifting left in security is essential to maintain a safe environment. With Trivy, vulnerabilities are detected early in the development lifecycle, which helps prevent future security breaches. For example, Trivy can identify Docker images running as root, Kubernetes manifests needing privileged access, or public S3 bucket configurations in Terraform scripts. Therefore, addressing these issues early reduces risks before production deployment.
Key uses of Trivy
Detecting common vulnerabilities and exposures
Trivy scans container images, filesystems, and Git repositories for common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). It identifies vulnerabilities across many operating systems and programming languages. The vulnerability database uses information from the National Vulnerability Database (NVD) and OS vendors like Debian and Ubuntu. For non-OS packages, Trivy relies on GitLab and GitHub databases.
Identifying misconfigurations in IaC
Trivy parses cloud-native templates like Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and CloudFormation. It applies security rules to find misconfigurations. Users can use built-in policies or create custom Rego policies. Furthermore, Trivy integrates with Visual Studio Code and JetBrains, allowing developers to check IaC security as they code.
Scanning for exposed secrets
Trivy scans container images, filesystems, and repositories for secrets like passwords and API keys. It includes over 50 built-in rules for secret scanning. These cover services such as AWS, GCP, GitHub, GitLab, Stripe, and Atlassian.
Compliance and benchmark scanning with Trivy
Trivy offers scanning to check compliance with several standards, including:
These checks ensure that environments comply with essential security standards.
Generating a software bill of materials (SBOM)
A software bill of materials (SBOM) lists the components, libraries, and dependencies of an application. SBOMs are vital for security, compliance, and audits. Trivy can create SBOMs in the CycloneDX standard for container images and other artefacts.
Using Trivy for Kubernetes scanning
Trivy scans entire clusters, specific namespaces, or individual resources in Kubernetes. Users can filter results by severity or type, such as vulnerabilities or misconfigurations. The Trivy K8s CLI runs locally or integrates into CI/CD pipelines. It’s useful for on-demand scans.
For continuous scanning, the Trivy K8s operator is deployed within clusters. It monitors state changes and scans whenever resources are updated or deployed.
Benefits of using Trivy
Reliability and regular updates
Trivy’s database updates every six hours through Aqua Security’s GitHub repository. A new Trivy version is released monthly.
Fast scanning performance
Trivy’s initial scans take only seconds. Subsequent scans run almost instantly, enabling efficient development workflows.
Easy installation and compatibility
Trivy is a single binary, free of dependencies. It runs on any operating system and CPU architecture.
Versatile scanning options
Trivy supports local and remote image scans, whether archived or extracted, across multiple container engines.
Production-ready capabilities
Trivy is the default integrated scanner for platforms like Harbor, Artifact Hub, and GitLab’s container scanning.
Open-source and cost-free
Trivy is fully open-source and licensed under Apache 2.0. It is free for all users.
In conclusion
Implementing shift left security principles can ensure that cloud-native apps are secure and compliant from development to production.
Data breach consequences resulting from cloud attacks range from unplanned expenses to fix security gaps to compliance fines, lawsuits, decrease in sales, or loss of competitive edge. According to a recent Statista survey, “seven percent of respondents answered that their companies suffered losses worth over 500,000 U.S. dollars because of cloud cyber threats”.
Integrating Trivy into your process helps find vulnerabilities and configuration issues earlier in the software development lifecycle, reducing the time and cost associated with fixing them later.
Secure Your Cloud Now
Explore Trivy Security in Devoteam TechRadar