audit cookbook

The audit cookbook allows you to run InSpec profiles as part of a Chef Client run. It downloads configured profiles from various sources like Chef Compliance, Chef Supermarket or Git and reports audit runs to Chef Compliance or Chef Visibility.

Version 2.0 of the audit cookbook is based on an idea from Michael Hedgpeth. Under the hood it uses Chef handler instead of Chef resources now.

Requirements

Chef

• Chef Client >=12.5.1

Chef Compliance and InSpec

Using the inspec_version attribute, please use the following InSpec version based on your Chef Compliance version:

You can see all publicly available InSpec versions here

Overview

The audit support three scenarios:

Chef Server Integration

The first scenario requires at least Chef Compliance 1.0 and the Chef Server extensions for Compliance. The architecture looks as following:

 ┌──────────────────────┐    ┌──────────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────────┐
 │     Chef Client      │    │     Chef Server      │    │   Chef Compliance   │
 │                      │    │                      │    │                     │
 │ ┌──────────────────┐ │    │                      │    │                     │
 │ │                  │◀┼────┼──────────────────────┼────│  Profiles           │
 │ │  audit cookbook  │ │    │                      │    │                     │
 │ │                  │─┼────┼──────────────────────┼───▶│  Reports            │
 │ └──────────────────┘ │    │                      │    │                     │
 │                      │    │                      │    │                     │
 └──────────────────────┘    └──────────────────────┘    └─────────────────────┘

Chef Compliance Integration

The second scenario supports a direct connection with Chef Compliance. It also supports chef-solo mode.

 ┌──────────────────────┐                                ┌─────────────────────┐
 │     Chef Client      │                                │   Chef Compliance   │
 │                      │                                │                     │
 │ ┌──────────────────┐ │                                │                     │
 │ │                  │◀┼────────────────────────────────│  Profiles           │
 │ │  audit cookbook  │ │                                │                     │
 │ │                  │─┼───────────────────────────────▶│  Reports            │
 │ └──────────────────┘ │                                │                     │
 │                      │                                │                     │
 └──────────────────────┘                                └─────────────────────┘

Chef Visibility Integration

The third scenario supports direct reporting to Chef Visibility. It also supports chef-solo mode.

 ┌──────────────────────┐                                ┌─────────────────────┐
 │     Chef Client      │     ┌───────────────────────┐  │   Chef Visibility   │
 │                      │  ┌──│ Profiles(Supermarket, │  │                     │
 │ ┌──────────────────┐ │  │  │ Github, local, etc)   │  │                     │
 │ │                  │◀┼──┘  └───────────────────────┘  │                     │
 │ │  audit cookbook  │ │                                │                     │
 │ │                  │─┼───────────────────────────────▶│  Reports            │
 │ └──────────────────┘ │                                │                     │
 │                      │                                │                     │
 └──────────────────────┘                                └─────────────────────┘

Usage

The audit cookbook needs to be configured for each node where the chef-client runs. The audit cookbook can be reused for all nodes, all node-specific configuration is done via Chef attributes.

Upload cookbook to Chef Server

The audit cookbook is available at Chef Supermarket. This allows you to reuse your existing workflow for managing cookbooks in your runlist.

If you want to upload the cookbook from git, use the following commands:

mkdir chef-cookbooks
cd chef-cookbooks
git clone https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/audit
cd ..
knife cookbook upload audit -o ./chef-cookbooks

Please ensure that chef-cookbooks is the parent directory of audit cookbook.

Reporting to Chef Compliance via Chef Server

If you want the audit cookbook to converge and retrieve compliance profiles through the Chef Server, set the collector and profiles attributes.

This requires your Chef Server to be integrated with the Chef Compliance server using this guide.

Configure node

Once the cookbook is available in Chef Server, you need to add the audit::default recipe to the run-list of each node. The profiles are selected via the node['audit']['profiles'] attribute. For example you can define the attributes in a role or environment file like this:

node.default['audit']['profiles'].push("path": "#{PROFILES_PATH}/mylinux-failure-success")

"audit": {
  "collector": "chef-server",
  "inspec_version": "1.2.1",
  "profiles": [
    # profile from Chef Compliance
    {
      "name": "linux",
      "compliance": "base/linux"
    },
    # profile from supermarket
    # note: If reporting to Compliance, the Supermarket profile needs to be uploaded to Chef Compliance first
    {
      "name": "ssh",
      "supermarket": "hardening/ssh-hardening"
    },
    # local Windows path
    {
      "name": "brewinc/win2012_audit",
      # filesystem path
      "path": "E:/profiles/win2012_audit"
    },
    # github
    {
      "name": "ssl",
      "git": "https://github.com/dev-sec/ssl-benchmark.git"
    },
    # url
    {
      "name": "ssh",
      "url": "https://github.com/dev-sec/tests-ssh-hardening/archive/master.zip"
    }
  ]
}

You can also configure in a policyfile like this:

default["audit"] = {
  "collector" => "chef-server",
  "profiles" => [
    {
      "name": "linux",
      "compliance": "base/linux"
    },
    {
      "name": "ssh",
      "compliance": "base/ssh"
    }
  ]
}

Reporting to Chef Automate (Chef Visibility via Chef Server)

If you want the audit cookbook to retrieve compliance profiles and report to Chef Automate (Visibility) through Chef Server, set the collector and profiles attributes.

This requires Chef Client >= 12.16.42. Also requires Chef Server version 12.11.1 and Chef Automate 0.6.6 or newer, as well as integration between the two. More details here.

Chef Automate is not shipping with build-in profiles at the moment. To upload profiles, you can use the Automate API or the inspec compliance subcommands (requires InSpec 1.7.2 or newer).

Attributes example:

"audit": {
  "collector": "chef-server-visibility",
  "insecure": false,
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "my-profile",
      "compliance": "john/my-profile"
    }
  ]
}

Direct reporting to Chef Compliance

If you want the audit cookbook to directly report to Chef Compliance, set the collector, server, owner, refresh_token and profiles attributes.

• collector - 'chef-compliance' to report to Chef Compliance
• server - url of Chef Compliance server with /api
• owner - Chef Compliance user or organization that will receive this scan report
• refresh_token - refresh token for Chef Compliance API (https://github.com/chef/inspec/issues/690)
  • note: A UI logout revokes the refresh_token. Workaround by logging in once in a private browser session, grab the token and then close the browser without logging out
• insecure - a true value will skip the SSL certificate verification when retrieving access token. Default value is false

"audit": {
  "collector": "chef-compliance",
  "server": "https://compliance-fqdn/api",
  "owner": "my-comp-org",
  "refresh_token": "5/4T...g==",
  "insecure": false,
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "windows",
      "compliance": "base/windows"
    }
  ]
}

Instead of a refresh token, it is also possible to use a token that expires in 12h after creation .

"audit": {
  "collector": "chef-compliance",
  "server": "https://compliance-fqdn/api",
  "owner": "my-comp-org",
  "token": "eyJ........................YQ",
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "windows",
      "compliance": "base/windows"
    }
  ]
}

Direct reporting to Chef Visibility

If you want the audit cookbook to directly report to Chef Visibility, set the collector attribute to 'chef-visibility'. Also specify where to retrieve the profiles from.

• insecure - a true value will skip the SSL certificate verification. Default value is false

This method is sending the report using the data_collector.server_url and data_collector.token, defined in client.rb. It requires inspec version 0.27.1 or greater.

"audit": {
  "collector": "chef-visibility",
  "insecure": "false",
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "brewinc/tmp_compliance_profile",
      "url": "https://github.com/nathenharvey/tmp_compliance_profile"
    }
  ]
}

If you are using a self-signed certificate, please also read how to add the Chef Automate certificate to the trusted_certs directory

Profile Upload to Compliance Server

In order to support build cookbook mode, the compliance_profile resource has an upload action that allows uploading a compressed
inspec compliance profile to the Compliance Server.

Simply include the upload recipe in the run_list, with attribute overrides for the audit hash like so:

audit: {
  server: 'https://compliance-server.test/api',
  collector: 'chef-compliance',
  refresh_token: '21/XMEK3...',
  profiles: [
   {
      'name': 'admin/ssh2',
      'path': '/some/base_ssh.tar.gz'
    }
  ]
}

Write to file on disk

To write the report to a file on disk, simply set the collector to 'json-file' like so:

audit: {
  collector: 'json-file',
  profiles: [
   {
      'name': 'admin/ssh2',
      'path': '/some/base_ssh.tar.gz'
    }
  ]
}

Multiple reporters

To enable multiple reporters, simply define multiple reporters with all the necessary information
for each one. For example, to report to chef-compliance and write to json file on disk:

"audit": {
  "collector": [ "chef-compliance", "json-file" ]
  "server": "https://compliance-fqdn/api",
  "owner": "my-comp-org",
  "refresh_token": "5/4T...g==",
  "insecure": false,
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "windows",
      "compliance": "base/windows"
    }
  ]
}

Fetcher attribute

To enable reporting to Chef Visibility with profiles from Chef Compliance, you need to have Chef Server integrated with Chef Compliance. You can then set the fetcher attribute to 'chef-server'.
This will allow the audit cookbook to fetch profiles stored in Chef Compliance. For example:

"audit": {
  "fetcher": "chef-server",
  "collector": "chef-visibility",
  "profiles": [
    {
      "name": "ssh",
      "compliance": "base/ssh"
    }
  ]
}

Relationship with Chef Audit Mode

The following tables compares the Chef Client audit mode with this audit cookbook.

Eventually the audit cookbook will replace audit mode. The only drawback is that you will not be able to execute tests in Chef recipes, but since you will be running these tests in production, you will want to have a straightforward, consistent process by which you include these tests throughout your development lifecycle. Within Chef Compliance, this is a profile.

Migrating from audit mode to audit cookbook:

We will improve the migration and help to ease the process and to reuse existing audit mode test as much as possible. At this point of time, an existing audit-mode test like:

control_group 'Check SSH Port' do
  control 'SSH' do
    it 'should be listening on port 22' do
      expect(port(22)).to be_listening
    end
  end
end

can be re-written in InSpec as follows:

# rename `control_group` to `control` and use a unique identifier
control "blog-1" do
  title 'Check SSH Port'  # add the title from `control_group`
  # rename the old `control` to `describe`
  describe 'SSH' do
    it 'should be listening on port 22' do
      expect(port(22)).to be_listening
    end
  end
end

or even simplified to:

control "blog-1" do
  title 'SSH should be listening on port 22'
  describe port(22) do
    it { should be_listening }
  end
end

Interval Settings

If you have long running audit profiles that you don't wish to execute on every chef-client run,
you can enable an interval:

default['audit']['interval']['enabled'] = true
default['audit']['interval']['time'] = 1440 # once a day, the default value

The time attribute is in minutes.

You can enable the interval and set the interval time, along with your desired profiles,
in an environment or role like this:

  "audit": {
    "profiles": [
      {
        "name": "ssh",
        "compliance": "base/ssh"
      },
      {
        "name": "linux",
        "compliance": "base/linux"
      }
    ],
    "interval": {
      "enabled": true,
      "time": 1440
    }
  }

Alternate Source Location for inspec Gem

If you are not able or do not wish to pull the inspec gem from rubygems.org,
you may specify an alternate source using:

# URI to alternate gem source (e.g. http://gems.server.com or filesytem location)
# root of location must host the *specs.4.8.gz source index
default['audit']['inspec_gem_source'] = 'http://internal.gem.server.com/gems'

Please note that all dependencies to the inspec gem must also be hosted in this location.

Troubleshooting

Please refer to TROUBLESHOOTING.md.

Please let us know if you have any issues, we are happy to help.

How to release the audit cookbook

• Cookbook source located here: (https://github.com/chef-cookbooks/audit)
• Hosted Chef users("collaborators") that can publish it to supermarket.chef.io: apop, arlimus, chris-rock, sr. Add more collaborators from Supermarket>Manage Cookbook>Add Collaborator

Releasing a new cookbook version:

1. version bump the metadata.rb and updated changelog (bundle exec rake changelog)
2. Get your changes merged into master
3. Go to the audit cookbook directory and pull from master
4. Run bundle install
5. Use stove to publish the cookbook(including git version tag). You must point to the private key of your hosted chef user. For example:

  bundle exec stove --username apop --key ~/git/chef-repo/.chef/apop.pem

License

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
limitations under the License.