terraform-compliance

BDD Testing for Terraform

A lightweight, security and compliance focused, BDD test framework

Table of Contents

• Usage
• Features
• [BDD Directives](#BDD Directives)
• Sample Test Set
• FAQ

Quick Overview

• compliance: Ensure the implemented code is following security standards, your own custom standards
• behaviour driven development: We have BDD for nearly everything, why not for IaC ?
• portable: just install it from pip or run it via docker
• why ?: why not ?

Support

terraform-compliance had a huge revamp/redesign following terraform's huge change coming with 0.12 version. Due to these breaking changes terraform-compliance 1.0.0+ versions only supports terraform 0.12+ versions.

Older terraform versions is supported with 0.6.4 with limited functionality.

Changelog

All changes coming with 1.0.0 and further versions can be found in CHANGELOG.

Usage

Recommended way to use terraform-compliance is using it's Docker image.

Just define it as a function in your shell ;

[~] $ function terraform-compliance { docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/target -i -t eerkunt/terraform-compliance "$@"; }

and use it wherever you want that has docker installed.

[~] $ terraform-compliance -h

  terraform-compliance v1.0.0 initiated
  
  usage: terraform-compliance [-h] --features feature directory --planfile
                              plan_file [--identity [ssh private key]]
                              [--version]
  
  BDD Test Framework for Hashicorp terraform
  
  optional arguments:
    -h, --help            show this help message and exit
    --features feature directory, -f feature directory
                          Directory (or git repository with 'git:' prefix)
                          consists of BDD features
    --planfile plan_file, -p plan_file
                          Plan output file generated by Terraform
    --identity [ssh private key], -i [ssh private key]
                          SSH Private key that will be use on git
                          authentication.
    --terraform [terraform_file], -t [terraform_file]
                            The absolute path to the terraform executable.
    --version, -v         show program's version number and exit

terraform-compliance is also available via PyPi package, so you can also install and use it via ;

[~] $ pip install terraform-compliance

How to use

-THIS IS ONLY APPLICABLE FOR 1.0.0+ VERSIONS

terraform-compliance requires a valid terraform plan file that is generated by terraform.

In order to do that you should add -out=plan.out to your terraform plan executions like ;

terraform plan -out=plan.out

This will create a propriety plan file that terraform can read also on apply operations.

After having your plan.out ( or any filename that is suitable for you ) created, you can run your terraform-compliance tests via ;

terraform-compliance -f /path/to/bdd/files -p /path/to/plan.out

Another Use Case: "I don't want to plan but want to scan my state file, current environment"

Just run ;

terraform show -json > state.out

which will generate a similar file to plan.out (as state.out in this example) that can be read by terraform-compliance

terraform-compliance -f /path/to/bdd/files -p /path/to/state.out

Features

Terraform Interpolations and Modules

terraform-compliance v1.0.0+ has full support for all terraform interpolations and modules, unlike to older versions. ]

Compliance Tests

The idea of terraform-compliance is to define compliance-as-code in BDD fashion where compliance against infrastructure-as-code is defined in a human readable format which makes the life easier to understand what is being tested and failed/passed.

Ideally, the tools needs to be integrated with a CI/CD tool and runs on every build - where you can define the scope like

• Company wide compliance-as-code
• Project wide compliance-as-code

terraform-compliance does not require any target environment to run. It runs against terraform plan outputs or state files, depending on your use case. Thus it is a stage that needs to run before any deployment (PRE-COMPLIANCE).

Here is a quick DEMO about how does it look like when it runs to a sample plan.out

BDD Directives

Every BDD feature file will have ;

• Feature
• Scenario/Scenario Outline
• Steps

Feature

This draws the overall picture of the feature file that may consist several scenarios.

For e.g. ;

Feature: Security Groups should be used to protect services/instances
  In order to improve security
  As engineers
  We'll use AWS Security Groups as a Perimeter Defence

This won't effect anything about the test steps, but it will ease the pain for everybody to understand what does that feature aims for.

Scenario

Every feature might have multiple scenarios. A scenario will define a test that might include multiple steps with BDD directives like ;

• GIVEN
• WHEN
• THEN

and every step might also have an additional extension step starting with ;

• AND

There are two types of Scenario ;

• Scenario : Used for defining a scenario without any multiple dynamic variables.
• Scenario Outline : Used for defining a scenario loops by giving multiple dynamic variables.

Steps

Steps are the functional tests that is actually executing necessary task to validate if the test is successful or not.

terraform-compliance has fixed steps already defined within the tool. It is possible to drill down your terraform resources by using these fixed steps.

Available Steps

BDD Conditions	Step Sentence	Parameters
GIVEN	I have {name} {type} configured	name: name of the key in terraform (e.g. aws_security_group, aws ) type: The type of the key (e.g. resource, provider etc.)
GIVEN	I have {resource_name} defined	name: name of the resource ( e.g. aws_security_group )
WHEN	I {math_formula} them	math_formula: count
THEN	I expect the result is {operator} than {number}	operator: more, more and equal, less, less and equal number: an integer
WHEN THEN	it contain {something} it contains {something} it must contain {something}	something: any property within terraform resoruce/provider/etc. (e.g. access_key, ingress )
THEN	encryption is enabled encryption must be enabled
THEN	its value {condition} match the "{search_regex}" regex	condition: must or must not search_regex: the regular expression of the searching value
WHEN THEN	its value must be set by a variable
THEN	it must {condition} have {proto} protocol and port {port} for {cidr}	{condition}: only,not proto: tcp, udp port: integer port number (or a port range by using - delimeter between port ranges [e.g. 80-84]) cidr: IP/Cidr
THEN	the scenario fails the scenario should fail it fails it should fail it must fail	None

Every condition can also be used to drill down more in the terraform code by utilising AND directive.

Any step consisting GIVEN and WHEN directives will lead to skip the whole scenario if one of those steps fails. THEN directive does not lead any scenario/step skipping, so if the step fails, whole scenario fails.

For e.g. ;

  Scenario: TLS enforcement on ELB resources
    Given I have AWS ELB resource defined
    When it contains listener
    Then it must contain ssl_certificate_id

To explain this, it is better to explain this by checking an example terraform code ;

resource "aws_elb" "some_elb" {
    name            = "My gorgeous ELB name"
    subnets         = "${var.subnet_ids}"
    security_groups = ["${aws_security_group.some_elb_sg.id}"]

    listener {
        instance_port      = 8084
        instance_protocol  = "https"
        lb_port            = 8084
        lb_protocol        = "https"
        ssl_certificate_id = "${module.acm-cert-elb.acm_cert_arn}"
    }
}

We are trying to create an AWS ELB Instance with SSL Certificates created from a module. The test steps will first run ;

Given I have AWS ELB resource defined

which will locate the resorce named aws_elb among all other resources ( please have a look [Naming Conventions](Naming Conventions) if you are not sure how AWS ELB transformed into aws_elb ) and then push the data to the step below ;

When it contains listener

Then it will drill down the listener definition within the HCL. If found, then the data within listener will be pushed on the next step.

Till this point, if any of the steps fail, the further steps will be SKIPPED.

For the last step ;

Then it must contain ssl_certificate_id

Here it will check within the data coming from the parent step if there is ssl_certificate_id defined within. This step is critical since it defines if the scenario will fail or pass.

Scenario Loops

It is also possible to use scenario loops. Please note that, Scenario Outline needs to be used instead of Scenario .

Scenario Outline: Well-known insecure protocol exposure on Public Network for ingress traffic
    Given I have AWS Security Group defined
  	When it contains ingress
    Then it must not have <proto> protocol and port <portNumber> for 0.0.0.0/0

  Examples:
    | ProtocolName | proto | portNumber |
    | HTTP         | tcp   | 443       |
    | Telnet       | tcp   | 23         |
    | SSH          | tcp   | 22         |
    | MySQL        | tcp   | 3306       |
    | MSSQL        | tcp   | 1443       |
    | NetBIOS      | tcp   | 139        |
    | RDP          | tcp   | 3389       |
    | Jenkins Slave| tcp   | 50000      |

Examples

Just as a sample to show the capabilities, terraform-compliance repository includes a sample of tests.

These sample tests include ;

• Checks if encryption at rest is applied
• Checks if encryption in flight is applied
• Checks if naming standards are applied based on a specific format
• Checks if tagging is applied for applicable resources following the standards
• Checks if there are number of subnets defined in the terraform code for a multi-layered architecture
• Checks if there are some specific ports are not allowed for specific subnets in Security Groups
• Checks if API Keys/Credentials are not used within the code.

The tests can be easily extended with the current capabilities. For any new capability please raise a new Issue and it will be implemented as soon as possible.

Using git repositories for features

terraform-compliance also supports remote fetching if any of the feature or terraform files exist in a remote git repo. Sample usage is like ;

[~] $ terraform-compliance -f git:https://some.git.repository/compliance-code.git -p /path/to/plan.out

If you already configured your ~/.ssh/config and pointing remote host, and private key file, you don't even need to use -i argument, it will be used automatically.

Argument passing

You can also push additional arguments that is specific for radish. Just to explain how it works ;

For e.g.

[~] $ terraform-compliance -f /path/to/features -t /path/to/terraform_files -v
terraform-compliance v1.0.0 initiated
...
...
...
Running tests.
0.13.0  <--- This is coming from radish directly.

Please note that 0.13.0 is the radish version comes from -v parameter.

FAQ

• Q. Where are the steps defined ?
• A. They all comes with terraform-compliance, you can just focus on BDD feature/scenario files.
  
  
• Q. What if I would like to add more steps ?
• A. You are welcome to contribute on any test, or just add an issue it will be added.
  
  
• Q. Where should terraform-compliance run ?
• A. Ideally in a CI/CD tool, where company policies are defined as feature files and all IaC is tested against. Trust, but verify.

License

MIT