serverless-inspec

An Amazon Web Services (AWS) Lambda function for running Chef InSpec in a serverless fashion

Getting Started

The following steps walk through how to deploy the "builder" AWS EC2 instance (optional) and deploy the serverless inspec Lambda function.

Clone the github repository

git clone https://github.com/martezr/serverless-inspec.git

Change directory to serverless-inspec

cd serverless-inspec

Provision Build AWS EC2 Instance

The code in this repository uses the serverless framework to deploy the Lambda function and Lambda layer. An AWS EC2 instance is used to act as a deployment server and has the serverless CLI installed along with Docker.

** Requires Terraform to be installed **

Change directory into the aws-terraform directory where the Terraform code is located.

cd aws-terraform

Run the terraform init command to download the appropriate Terraform providers. The scaffold code uses local storage for storing the Terraform state file.

terraform init

Terraform Input Variables

The Terraform code supports the following input variables. The variables can be supplied on the command line as individual arguments or added to a variables file similar to the grt-dev.tfvars file in the repo.

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
region	The AWS region to depoy to	string	us-east-1	no
instance_type	The type of instance to start	string	t2.micro	no
key_name	The key name to use for the instance	string	-	yes
subnet_id	The VPC Subnet ID to launch in	string	-	yes
vpc_security_group_ids	A list of security group IDs to associate with	list	-	no

Run the terraform apply command with the --auto-approve flag to prevent being prompted for confirmation along with the name of the Terraform variables file.

terraform apply --auto-approve -var-file=grt-dev.tfvars

SSH to the EC2 instance and change the directory to the code directory in the serverless-inspec git repo on the EC2 instance.

cd /serverless-inspec/code

Serverless Deployment File

The Lambda function is deployed using the Serverless framework (https://serverless.com) to simplify the packaging and deployment. Included in the repository is the code/serverless.yaml deployment file that can be used and modifications can be made by referencing the Serverless documentation (https://serverless.com/framework/docs/providers/aws/guide/serverless.yml/).

The sls deploy command is used to deploy the Lambda function and the name of the S3 bucket to store the scan results along with the URL of the InSpec profile to run should be provided as command line arguments.

service: inspec-serverless

provider:
  name: aws
  runtime: ruby2.5
  region: us-east-1
  stage: prod
  iamManagedPolicies:
    - 'arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/ReadOnlyAccess'
  environment:
    HOME: /tmp
    INSPEC_PROFILE: "https://github.com/martezr/serverless-inspec-profile"
    S3_DATA_BUCKET: mreed-bucket

functions:
  inspec_scan:
    handler: handler.inspec_scan
    layers:
      - {Ref: InspecLambdaLayer }

layers:
  inspec:
    path: layer

Deploying the Lambda function

The Lambda function can be deployed using the provided serverless deployment file by running the following command from the "code" directory in the repository.

[root@ip-172-31-2-252 code]# sls deploy --s3_data_bucket mreed-bucket --inspec_profile https://github.com/martezr/serverless-inspec-profile
Serverless: Packaging service...
Serverless: Excluding development dependencies...
Serverless: Excluding development dependencies...
Serverless: Creating Stack...
Serverless: Checking Stack create progress...
.....
Serverless: Stack create finished...
Serverless: Uploading CloudFormation file to S3...
Serverless: Uploading artifacts...
Serverless: Uploading service inspec-serverless.zip file to S3 (372 B)...
Serverless: Uploading service inspec.zip file to S3 (37.66 MB)...
Serverless: Validating template...
Serverless: Updating Stack...
Serverless: Checking Stack update progress...
..................
Serverless: Stack update finished...
Service Information
service: inspec-serverless
stage: prod
region: us-east-1
stack: inspec-serverless-prod
resources: 6
api keys:
  None
endpoints:
  None
functions:
  inspec_scan: inspec-serverless-prod-inspec_scan
layers:
  inspec: arn:aws:lambda:us-east-1:684882843674:layer:inspec:7

Environment Variables

The following environment variables are defined for the Lambda function.

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
HOME	The HOME environment variable for enabling proper execution of the Lambda function	string	/tmp	yes
INSPEC_PROFILE	The github url of the InSpec profile to run	string	-	yes
S3_DATA_BUCKET	The name of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 bucket to store the JSON output file	string	-	no

Destroy the "Builder" AWS EC2 Instance

Once the Lambda function has been deployed the "builder" AWS EC2 instance can be destroyed.

Run the terraform destroy command with the --auto-approve flag to prevent being prompted for confirmation along with the name of the Terraform variables file.

terraform destroy --auto-approve -var-file=grt-dev.tfvars

InSpec Lambda Payload

The Lambda function can be invoked in a generic manner that accepts parameters to specified in the JSON payload sent to the function during invocation.

{
  "s3_bucket": "",
  "inspec_profiles": ["https://github.com/martezr/serverless-inspec-profile"]
}

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
inspec_profiles	The github url of the InSpec profile(s) to run	array	-	yes
s3_bucket	The name of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) S3 bucket to store the JSON output file	string	-	yes

Special Thanks

Special Thanks to Martez Reed for the orginal start on this work and helping the community get a great start on this effort.

Orginal Contributor:	Martez Reed (martez.reed@greenreedtech.com)

NOTICE

© 2019-2021 The MITRE Corporation.

Approved for Public Release; Distribution Unlimited. Case Number 18-3678.

NOTICE

MITRE hereby grants express written permission to use, reproduce, distribute, modify, and otherwise leverage this software to the extent permitted by the licensed terms provided in the LICENSE.md file included with this project.

NOTICE

This software was produced for the U. S. Government under Contract Number HHSM-500-2012-00008I, and is subject to Federal Acquisition Regulation Clause 52.227-14, Rights in Data-General.

No other use other than that granted to the U. S. Government, or to those acting on behalf of the U. S. Government under that Clause is authorized without the express written permission of The MITRE Corporation.