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Checkov IaC scanning



You can easily set up a Checkov step to run automated scans in your Harness pipeline. This step scans the IaC repository you specify using the Checkov CLI. Then it correlates, deduplicates, and ingests the scan results into Harness. You can see your scan results in the Security Tests tab of the pipeline execution.

Important notes for running Checkov scans in STO​

The following topics contain useful information for setting up scanner integrations in STO:

Set-up workflows​

Orchestration scans for IaC repositories

Prerequisites​


Add the Checkov scanner​

Do the following:

  1. Add a Security, Build, or Infrastructure stage to your pipeline.
  2. Add a Checkov step to the stage.

Set up the Checkov step​

Required settings​
  1. Scan mode = Orchestration
  2. Target and Variant Detection = Auto
Optional settings​
  • Fail on Severity — Stop the pipeline if the scan detects any issues at a specified severity or higher
  • Log Level — Useful for debugging
Ingestion scans for IaC repositories
note

Harness STO can ingest both JSON and SARIF data from Checkov, but Harness recommends publishing to JSON because this format includes more detailed information.

Add a shared path for your scan results​

  1. Add a Security, Build, or Infrastructure stage to your pipeline.
  2. In the stage Overview, add a shared path such as /shared/scan_results.

Copy scan results to the shared path​

There are two primary workflows to do this:

  • Add a Run step that runs a Checkov scan from the command line and then copies the results to the shared path.

  • Copy results from a Checkov scan that ran outside the pipeline.

    For more information and examples, go to Ingestion scans.

Set up the Checkov scanner​

Add a Checkov step to the stage and set it up as follows.

Required settings​
  1. Scan mode = Ingestion
  2. Target name — Usually the repo name
  3. Target variant — Usually the scanned branch. You can also use a runtime input and specify the branch at runtime.
  4. Ingestion file — For example, /shared/scan_results/checkov-iac-scan.json
Optional settings​
  • Fail on Severity — Stop the pipeline if the scan detects any issues at a specified severity or higher.
  • Log Level — Useful for debugging

Checkov step settings reference​

Scan​

Scan Mode​

  • Orchestration Configure the step to run a scan and then ingest, normalize, and deduplicate the results.

Target​

Type​

  • Repository Scan a codebase repo.

    In most cases, you specify the codebase using a code repo connector that connects to the Git account or repository where your code is stored. For information, go to Configure codebase.

Target and Variant Detection​

When Auto is enabled for code repositories, the step detects these values using git:

  • To detect the target, the step runs git config --get remote.origin.url.
  • To detect the variant, the step runs git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD. The default assumption is that the HEAD branch is the one you want to scan.

Note the following:

  • Auto is not available when the Scan Mode is Ingestion.
  • Auto is the default selection for new pipelines. Manual is the default for old pipelines, but you might find that neither radio button is selected in the UI.

Name​

The identifier for the target such codebaseAlpha. Descriptive target names make it much easier to navigate your scan data in the STO UI.

It is good practice to specify a baseline for every target.

Variant​

The identifier for the specific variant to scan. This is usually the branch name, image tag, or product version. Harness maintains a historical trend for each variant.

Workspace​

The workspace path on the pod running the scan step. The workspace path is /harness by default.

You can override this if you want to scan only a subset of the workspace. For example, suppose the pipeline publishes artifacts to a subfolder /tmp/artifacts and you want to scan these artifacts only. In this case, you can specify the workspace path as /harness/tmp/artifacts.

Additionally, you can specify individual files to scan as well. For instance, if you only want to scan a specific file like /tmp/iac/infra.tf, you can specify the workspace path as /harness/tmp/iac/infra.tf

Ingestion File​

The path to your scan results when running an Ingestion scan, for example /shared/scan_results/checkov.sarif.

  • The data file must be in a supported format for the scanner.

  • The data file must be accessible to the scan step. It's good practice to save your results files to a shared path in your stage. In the visual editor, go to the stage where you're running the scan. Then go to Overview > Shared Paths. You can also add the path to the YAML stage definition like this:

        - stage:
          spec:
            sharedPaths:
              - /shared/scan_results

Log Level​

The minimum severity of the messages you want to include in your scan logs. You can specify one of the following:

  • DEBUG
  • INFO
  • WARNING
  • ERROR

Additional CLI flags​

Use this field to run the scanner binary with additional flags supported by the external scanner.

caution

Passing CLI flags is an advanced feature. Some flags might not work in the context of STO. You should test your flags and arguments thoroughly before you use them in your production environment.

Fail on Severity​

Every STO scan step has a Fail on Severity setting. If the scan finds any vulnerability with the specified severity level or higher, the pipeline fails automatically. You can specify one of the following:

  • CRITICAL
  • HIGH
  • MEDIUM
  • LOW
  • INFO
  • NONE — Do not fail on severity

The YAML definition looks like this: fail_on_severity : critical # | high | medium | low | info | none

Settings​

You can add more settings to the scan step as needed.

Additional Configuration​

The fields under Additional Configuration vary based on the type of infrastructure. Depending on the infrastructure type selected, some fields may or may not appear in your settings. Below are the details for each field

Advanced settings​

In the Advanced settings, you can use the following options:

Proxy settings​

This step supports Harness Secure Connect if you're using Harness Cloud infrastructure. During the Secure Connect setup, the HTTPS_PROXY and HTTP_PROXY variables are automatically configured to route traffic through the secure tunnel. If there are specific addresses that you want to bypass the Secure Connect proxy, you can define those in the NO_PROXY variable. This can be configured in the Settings of your step.

If you need to configure a different proxy (not using Secure Connect), you can manually set the HTTPS_PROXY, HTTP_PROXY, and NO_PROXY variables in the Settings of your step.

Definitions of Proxy variables:​

  • HTTPS_PROXY: Specify the proxy server for HTTPS requests, example https://sc.internal.harness.io:30000
  • HTTP_PROXY: Specify the proxy server for HTTP requests, example http://sc.internal.harness.io:30000
  • NO_PROXY: Specify the domains as comma-separated values that should bypass the proxy. This allows you to exclude certain traffic from being routed through the proxy.