Kube-hunter hunts for security weaknesses in Kubernetes clusters. The tool was developed to increase awareness and visibility for security issues in Kubernetes environments. You should NOT run kube-hunter on a Kubernetes cluster you don't own!
Run kube-hunter: kube-hunter is available as a container (aquasec/kube-hunter), and we also offer a web site at kube-hunter.aquasec.com where you can register online to receive a token allowing you see and share the results online. You can also run the Python code yourself as described below.
Contribute: We welcome contributions, especially new hunter modules that perform additional tests. If you would like to develop your own modules please read Guidelines For Developing Your First kube-hunter Module.
Run kube-hunter on any machine (including your laptop), select Remote scanning and give the IP address or domain name of your Kubernetes cluster. This will give you an attackers-eye-view of your Kubernetes setup.
You can run kube-hunter directly on a machine in the cluster, and select the option to probe all the local network interfaces.
You can also run kube-hunter in a pod within the cluster. This gives an indication of how exposed your cluster would be in the event that one of your application pods is compromised (through a software vulnerability, for example).
First check the pre-requisites
By default, kube-hunter will open an interactive session, in which you will be able to select one of the following scan options. You can also specify the scan option manually from the command line. These are your options:
-
Remote scanning To specify remote machines for hunting, select option 1 or use the
--remote
option. Example:./kube-hunter.py --remote some.node.com
-
interface scanning To specify interface scanning, you can use the
--interface
option. (this will scan all of the machine's network interfaces) Example:./kube-hunter.py --interface
-
Network scanning To specify a specific CIDR to scan, use the
--cidr
option. Example:./kube-hunter.py --cidr 192.168.0.0/24
Active hunting is an option in which kube-hunter will exploit vulnerabilities it finds, in order to explore for further vulnerabilities. The main difference between normal and active hunting is that a normal hunt will never change state of the cluster, while active hunting can potentially do state-changing operations on the cluster, which could be harmful.
By default, kube-hunter does not do active hunting. To active hunt a cluster, use the --active
flag. Example:
./kube-hunter.py --remote some.domain.com --active
You can see the list of tests with the --list
option: Example:
./kube-hunter.py --list
To see active hunting tests as well as passive:
./kube-hunter.py --list --active
To see only a mapping of your nodes network, run with --mapping
option. Example:
./kube-hunter.py --cidr 192.168.0.0/24 --mapping
This will output all the Kubernetes nodes kube-hunter has found.
To control logging, you can specify a log level, using the --log
option. Example:
./kube-hunter.py --active --log WARNING
Available log levels are:
- DEBUG
- INFO (default)
- WARNING
By default, the report will be dispatched to stdout
, but you can specify different methods, by using the --dispatch
option. Example:
./kube-hunter.py --report json --dispatch http
Available dispatch methods are:
- stdout (default)
- http (to configure, set the following environment variables:)
- KUBEHUNTER_HTTP_DISPATCH_URL (defaults to: https://localhost)
- KUBEHUNTER_HTTP_DISPATCH_METHOD (defaults to: POST)
There are three methods for deploying kube-hunter:
You can run the kube-hunter python code directly on your machine.
You will need the following installed:
- python 3.x
- pip
Clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/aquasecurity/kube-hunter.git
Install module dependencies:
cd ./kube-hunter
pip install -r requirements.txt
Run:
./kube-hunter.py
If you want to use pyinstaller/py2exe you need to first run the install_imports.py script.
Aqua Security maintains a containerised version of kube-hunter at aquasec/kube-hunter
. (Please note this is not currently up to date due to an issue in an underlying dependency that is blocking the automated build). This container includes this source code, plus an additional (closed source) reporting plugin for uploading results into a report that can be viewed at kube-hunter.aquasec.com. Please note that running the aquasec/kube-hunter
container and uploading reports data are subject to additional terms and conditions.
The Dockerfile in this repository allows you to build a containerised version without the reporting plugin.
If you run the kube-hunter container with the host network it will be able to probe all the interfaces on the host:
docker run -it --rm --network host aquasec/kube-hunter
Note for Docker for Mac/Windows: Be aware that the "host" for Docker for Mac or Windows is the VM which Docker runs containers within. Therefore specifying --network host
allows kube-hunter access to the network interfaces of that VM, rather than those of your machine.
By default kube-hunter runs in interactive mode. You can also specify the scanning option with the parameters described above e.g.
docker run --rm aquasec/kube-hunter --cidr 192.168.0.0/24
This option lets you discover what running a malicious container can do/discover on your cluster. This gives a perspective on what an attacker could do if they were able to compromise a pod, perhaps through a software vulnerability. This may reveal significantly more vulnerabilities.
The job.yaml
file defines a Job that will run kube-hunter in a pod, using default Kubernetes pod access settings.
- Run the job with
kubectl create
with that yaml file. - Find the pod name with
kubectl describe job kube-hunter
- View the test results with
kubectl logs <pod name>
Please note you may wish to build your own version of the container and update job.yaml to use it, as the image on Docker hub is not currently up to date due to an issue in an underlying dependency