EC2 Instance - InSpec Profile

Description

A library InSpec compliance profile containing a custom ec2_instance resource that can be used to test meta-data and user-data for AWS EC2 nodes. It does not require AWS API credentials since the resource is retrieving the data on the target ec2 nodes using the http://169.254.169.254/ metadata API.

InSpec is an open-source run-time framework and rule language used to specify compliance, security, and policy requirements for testing any node in your infrastructure.

The controls you find in the ./controls directory are sample ones to demonstrate how to use the ec2_instance resource.

Requirements

• InSpec

Platforms

• Linux
• Windows

Usage

• Add this to your profile's inspec.yml to ensure a correct InSpec version and define the profile dependency:

supports:
  - inspec: '~> 1.0'
depends:
  - name: ec2-instance-profile
    git: https://github.com/alexpop/ec2-instance-profile
    version: '~> 0.1'

Examples

• Use the ec2_instance resource in your profiles, the same way you'd use core InSpec resources like file, service, command, etc.

control 'ec2-instance-1.1' do
  impact 1.0
  title 'Ensure no sensitive information is passed via the user-data'
  describe ec2_instance do
    it { should exist }
    its('user-data') { should_not match /password|secret.?access/i }
  end
end

control 'ec2-instance-1.2' do
  impact 0.6
  title 'Test the IP addresses by specifying meta-data API version'
  describe ec2_instance(version: '2016-06-30') do
    it { should exist }
    its('meta-data/public-ipv4') { should eq '' }
    its('meta-data/local-ipv4') { should match /^172\.31\..+/ }
  end
end

ec2_instance resource parameters:

Name	Required	Type	Description
version	no	String	Defaults to 'latest' if not specified. Call this on your EC2 instance to find out all available versions: http://169.254.169.254/
timeout	no	Numeric	Number of seconds to wait for the HTTP connection to open. The default value is 2 seconds.
curl_path	no	String	Defaults to curl in $PATH if not specified.
wget_path	no	String	Defaults to wget in $PATH if not specified.

An HTTP client is required on the target node in order for the resource to work. curl, wget and Invoke-WebRequest(Windows) are currently supported.

Example of instantiating the resource with a Hash of the above parameters:

describe ec2_instance(version: '2016-06-30', timeout: 3, curl_path: '/usr/bin/curl') do
  it { should exist }
end

ec2_instance resource tests:

describe ec2_instance do
  # Returns true if the node is indeed an EC2 instance
  it { should exist }
  # Test the value returned by 'http://169.254.169.254/latest/SOMETHING', see examples below:
  its('SOMETHING') { should match /hello-world/i }
  # Test 'http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/local-ipv4' if we write:
  its('meta-data/public-ipv4') { should eq '' }
  # Test 'http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id' if we write:
  its('meta-data/instance-id') { should match /^.{19}+$/ }
end

License and Author

• Author: Alex Pop

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.