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Gitleaks scanner reference for STO

You can scan your code repositories using Gitleaks, an open-source tool designed to find common security issues in Python code.

Gitleaks can publish results in Static Analysis Results Interchange Format (SARIF), an open data format supported by many scan tools.

For a description of the end-to-end workflow, go to Ingest SARIF data.

Important notes​

This section describes recommended best practices and references to useful information.

Update your allowlist with inactive secrets​

You can specify an allowlist of secrets that are inactive, rotated, deactivated, or false positives. Gitleaks ignores these secrets during a scan. Set up your allowlist in a .gitleaks.toml file and place it at the root of your repository. For more information about this format,

note

It is best practice to update your allowlist with secrets that are inactive, rotated, deactivated, or false positives. Otherwise, Gitleaks will continue to detect these secrets in your commit history even after they have been updated in your code.

The following steps outline the recommended workflow:

  1. Run a Gitleaks scan and review the detected passwords, tokens, and other secrets.

  2. Rotate or deactivate all secrets that are currently active.

  3. Compile a list of all secrets that are now inactive, rotated, deactivated, or false positives.

  4. Update the allowlist in .gitleaks.toml to include these secrets.

Harness recommends that you add your secrets as plain text to the regexes array, as shown in this example. This is the most reliable method to ensure that Gitleaks detects only active secrets when you run another scan.

.gitleaks.toml example
title = "example gitleaks config"

[extend]
# useDefault will extend the base configuration with the default gitleaks config:
# https://github.com/zricethezav/gitleaks/blob/master/config/gitleaks.toml
useDefault = true

[allowlist]
# Recommended practice is to add your secrets to a regexes array, 
# not to a commits array.
regexTarget = "match"
description = "whitelist public and test secrets"
regexes = [
  '''1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef''',
  '''abcdef1234567890abcdef1234567890''',
]

Redact secrets​

Harness recommends that you configure the Gitleaks step to redact secrets in the log output.

Speed up your scans​

To speed up your scan times, you can configure the Gitleaks step to limit the number of commits to scan. By default, Gitleaks scans the entire commit history.

Write custom detection rules​

You can also write your own custom detection rules.

For more information​

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

Gitleaks step settings for STO scans​

The recommended workflow is to add a GitLeaks step to a Security Tests or CI Build stage and then configure it as described below.

Scan Mode​

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

Scan Configuration​

The predefined configuration to use for the scan. All scan steps have at least one configuration.

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-detect 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-detection is not available when the Scan Mode is Ingestion.
  • Auto-detect 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 as codebaseAlpha or jsmith/myalphaservice. 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 (repository)​

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.

Ingestion File​

The path to your scan results when running an Ingestion scan, for example /shared/scan_results/myscan.latest.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 gitleaks scanner with additional CLI flags such as:

--redact --log-opts="-n 1000"

  • --redact redacts secrets in the log output.

  • --log-opts narrows the range of commits that Gitleaks scans in a Pull Request. For example, -n 1000 limits the scan to the last 1000 commits. You can also scan a range of commits using a command such as: tool_args : --log-opts=="--all commitA..commitF"

caution

Passing additional CLI flags is an advanced feature. Harness recommends the following best practices:

  • Test your flags and arguments thoroughly before you use them in your Harness pipelines. Some flags might not work in the context of STO.

  • Don't add flags that are already used in the default configuration of the scan step.

    To check the default configuration, go to a pipeline execution where the scan step ran with no additional flags. Check the log output for the scan step. You should see a line like this:

    Command [ scancmd -f json -o /tmp/output.json ]

    In this case, don't add -f or -o to Additional CLI flags.

Fail on Severity​

Every Security 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 use this field to specify environment variables for your scanner.

You can also use this field to speed up your Gitleaks scans.

Additional Configuration​

In the Additional Configuration settings, you can use the following options:

Advanced settings​

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

Gitleaks step configuration example for STO​

Here's an example of a configured Gitleaks step.

- step:
    type: Gitleaks
    name: gitleaks
    identifier: gitleaks
    spec:
      mode: ingestion
      config: default
      target:
        name: nodegoat
        type: repository
        variant: dev
      advanced:
        log:
          level: debug
      ingestion:
        file: /path/of/file.sarif
    description: gitleaks step

Gitleaks ingestion pipeline example for STO​

The following pipeline shows an end-to-end ingestion workflow. The pipeline consists of a Build stage with two steps:

  1. A Run step that sends a gitleaks detect command to the local Gitleaks container to scan the codebase specified for the pipeline. This command specifies the output file for the scan results: /shared/scan_results/sarif_simple.sarif.

  2. A Gitleaks step that auto-detects the data file type (SARIF) and then ingests and normalizes the data from the output file.


pipeline:
  projectIdentifier: STO
  orgIdentifier: default
  tags: {}
  stages:
    - stage:
        name: gitleaks-build-stage
        identifier: gitleaksbuildstage
        type: CI
        spec:
          cloneCodebase: true
          execution:
            steps:
              - stepGroup:
                  name: Ingestion Workflow with a runs step
                  identifier: Generation
                  steps:
                    - step:
                        type: Run
                        name: gitleaks
                        identifier: Run_1
                        spec:
                          connectorRef: CONTAINER_IMAGE_REGISTRY_CONNECTOR
                          image: zricethezav/gitleaks:latest
                          shell: Sh
                          command: |
                            gitleaks detect --source /harness --report-path /shared/scan_results/ingest-data.sarif --report-format 'sarif' --exit-code 0 --redact -v
                          resources:
                            limits:
                              memory: 2048Mi
                              cpu: 2000m
                        when:
                          stageStatus: Success
                    - step:
                        type: Gitleaks
                        name: gitleaks_ingest
                        identifier: gitleaks_ingest
                        spec:
                          mode: ingestion
                          config: default
                          target:
                            name: gitleaks-example
                            type: repository
                            variant: master
                          advanced:
                            log:
                              level: info
                          ingestion:
                            file: /shared/scan_results/ingest-data.sarif
          sharedPaths:
            - /shared/scan_results
          caching:
            enabled: false
            paths: []
          infrastructure:
            type: KubernetesDirect
            spec:
              connectorRef: K8S_DELEGATE_CONNECTOR
              namespace: harness-delegate-ng
              automountServiceAccountToken: true
              nodeSelector: {}
              os: Linux
  properties:
    ci:
      codebase:
        connectorRef: CODEBASE_CONNECTOR
        repoName: dvpwa
        build: <+input>
  identifier: Gitleaks_docsexample_INGESTION
  name: Gitleaks_docsexample_INGESTION


Gitleaks orchestration pipeline example for STO​

The following pipeline illustrates an orchestration workflow where the Gitleaks step scans the codebase and ingests the results in one step.


pipeline:
  projectIdentifier: STO
  orgIdentifier: default
  tags: {}
  stages:
    - stage:
        name: gitleaks-build-stage
        identifier: gitleaksbuildstage
        type: CI
        spec:
          cloneCodebase: true
          execution:
            steps:
              - stepGroup:
                  name: "STO Orchestration "
                  identifier: Orchestration
                  steps:
                    - step:
                        type: Gitleaks
                        name: gitleaks_orch
                        identifier: gitleaks_orch
                        spec:
                          mode: orchestration
                          config: default
                          target:
                            name: gitleaks-example
                            type: repository
                            variant: master
                          advanced:
                            log:
                              level: info
                          settings:
                            tool_args: "--log-opts=\"-n 1000\"`"
                          resources:
                            limits:
                              memory: 2048Mi
                              cpu: 2000m
          sharedPaths:
            - /shared/scan_results
          caching:
            enabled: false
            paths: []
          infrastructure:
            type: KubernetesDirect
            spec:
              connectorRef: K8S_DELEGATE_CONNECTOR
              namespace: harness-delegate-ng
              automountServiceAccountToken: true
              nodeSelector: \{}
              os: Linux
  properties:
    ci:
      codebase:
        connectorRef: CODEBASE_CONNECTOR
        repoName: dvpwa
        build: <+input>
  identifier: gitleaks_docs_example_ORCHESTRATION
  name: gitleaks_docs_example_ORCHESTRATION