KICS CLI¶
KICS is a command line tool, and should be used in a terminal. The next section describes the usage, the same help content is displayed when kics is provided with the --help flag.
KICS Command¶
KICS has the following commands available:
Keeping Infrastructure as Code Secure
Usage:
kics [command]
Available Commands:
generate-id Generates uuid for query
help Help about any command
list-platforms List supported platforms
remediate Auto remediates the project
scan Executes a scan analysis
version Displays the current version
Flags:
--ci display only log messages to CLI output (mutually exclusive with silent)
-h, --help help for kics
-f, --log-format string determines log format (pretty,json) (default "pretty")
--log-level string determines log level (TRACE,DEBUG,INFO,WARN,ERROR,FATAL) (default "INFO")
--log-path string path to generate log file (info.log)
--no-color disable CLI color output
--profiling string enables performance profiler that prints resource consumption metrics in the logs during the execution (CPU, MEM)
-s, --silent silence stdout messages (mutually exclusive with verbose and ci)
-v, --verbose write logs to stdout too (mutually exclusive with silent)
Use "kics [command] --help" for more information about a command.
Scan Command Options¶
Executes a scan analysis
Usage:
kics scan [flags]
Flags:
-m, --bom include bill of materials (BoM) in results output
--cloud-provider strings list of cloud providers to scan (alicloud, aws, azure, gcp)
--config string path to configuration file
--disable-full-descriptions disable request for full descriptions and use default vulnerability descriptions
--disable-secrets disable secrets scanning
--exclude-categories strings exclude categories by providing its name
cannot be provided with query inclusion flags
can be provided multiple times or as a comma separated string
example: 'Access control,Best practices'
--exclude-gitignore disables the exclusion of paths specified within .gitignore file
-e, --exclude-paths strings exclude paths from scan
supports glob and can be provided multiple times or as a quoted comma separated string
example: './shouldNotScan/*,somefile.txt'
--exclude-queries strings exclude queries by providing the query ID
cannot be provided with query inclusion flags
can be provided multiple times or as a comma separated string
example: 'e69890e6-fce5-461d-98ad-cb98318dfc96,4728cd65-a20c-49da-8b31-9c08b423e4db'
-x, --exclude-results strings exclude results by providing the similarity ID of a result
can be provided multiple times or as a comma separated string
example: 'fec62a97d569662093dbb9739360942f...,31263s5696620s93dbb973d9360942fc2a...'
--exclude-severities strings exclude results by providing the severity of a result
can be provided multiple times or as a comma separated string
example: 'info,low'
possible values: 'high, medium, low, info, trace'
--fail-on strings which kind of results should return an exit code different from 0
accepts: high, medium, low and info
example: "high,low" (default [high,medium,low,info])
-h, --help help for scan
--ignore-on-exit string defines which kind of non-zero exits code should be ignored
accepts: all, results, errors, none
example: if 'results' is set, only engine errors will make KICS exit code different from 0 (default "none")
-i, --include-queries strings include queries by providing the query ID
cannot be provided with query exclusion flags
can be provided multiple times or as a comma separated string
example: 'e69890e6-fce5-461d-98ad-cb98318dfc96,4728cd65-a20c-49da-8b31-9c08b423e4db'
--input-data string path to query input data files
-b, --libraries-path string path to directory with libraries (default "./assets/libraries")
--minimal-ui simplified version of CLI output
--no-progress hides the progress bar
--output-name string name used on report creations (default "results")
-o, --output-path string directory path to store reports
-p, --path strings paths or directories to scan
example: "./somepath,somefile.txt"
--payload-lines adds line information inside the payload when printing the payload file
-d, --payload-path string path to store internal representation JSON file
--preview-lines int number of lines to be display in CLI results (min: 1, max: 30) (default 3)
-q, --queries-path strings paths to directory with queries (default [./assets/queries])
--report-formats strings formats in which the results will be exported (all, asff, codeclimate, csv, cyclonedx, glsast, html, json, junit, pdf, sarif, sonarqube) (default [json])
-r, --secrets-regexes-path string path to secrets regex rules configuration file
--timeout int number of seconds the query has to execute before being canceled (default 60)
-t, --type strings case insensitive list of platform types to scan
(Ansible, AzureResourceManager, Buildah, CloudFormation, Crossplane, DockerCompose, Dockerfile, GRPC, GoogleDeploymentManager, Knative, Kubernetes, OpenAPI, Pulumi, ServerLessFW, Terraform)
Global Flags:
--ci display only log messages to CLI output (mutually exclusive with silent)
-f, --log-format string determines log format (pretty,json) (default "pretty")
--log-level string determines log level (TRACE,DEBUG,INFO,WARN,ERROR,FATAL) (default "INFO")
--log-path string path to generate log file (info.log)
--no-color disable CLI color output
--profiling string enables performance profiler that prints resource consumption metrics in the logs during the execution (CPU, MEM)
-s, --silent silence stdout messages (mutually exclusive with verbose and ci)
-v, --verbose write logs to stdout too (mutually exclusive with silent)
Auto Remediate Command Options¶
Auto remediates the project
Usage:
kics remediate [flags]
Flags:
-h, --help help for remediate
--include-ids strings which remediation (similarity ids) should be remediated
example "f6b7acac2d541d8c15c88d2be51b0e6abd576750b71c580f2e3a9346f7ed0e67,6af5fc5d7c0ad0077348a090f7c09949369d24d5608bbdbd14376a15de62afd1" (default [all])
--results string points to the JSON results file with remediation
The other commands have no further options.
Exclude Paths¶
By default, KICS excludes paths specified in the .gitignore file in the root of the repository. To disable this behavior, use flag --exclude-gitignore.
Library Flag Usage¶
As mentioned above, the library flag (-b or --libraries-path) refers to the directory with libraries. The functions need to be grouped by platform and the library file name should follow the format: <platform>.rego to be loaded by KICS. It doesn't matter your directory structure. In other words, for example, if you want to indicate a directory that contains a library for your terraform queries, you should group your functions (used in your terraform queries) in a file named terraform.rego wherever you want.
This will merge the custom libraries found on the flag's path with KICS's default libraries. Note that any functions declared in a custom library with the same signature as an existing function in the default libraries will cause the default library function to be overwritten by the custom definition provided.
Profiling¶
With the --profiling flag KICS will print resource consumption information in the logs.
You can only enable one profiler at a time, CPU or MEM.
📝 Please note that execution time may be impacted by enabling performance profiler due to sampling
Disable Crash Report¶
You can disable KICS crash report to sentry.io with DISABLE_CRASH_REPORT environment variable set to 0 or false e.g:
DISABLE_CRASH_REPORT=0 ./bin/kics version
# 'KICS crash report disabled' message should appear in the logs